Shadowing Practice: Oprah Wants YOU to MAXIMIZE Your Potential | The Life You Want Class | Oprah Daily - Learn English Speaking with Video

Welcome, insiders, to the Life You Want class.

So nice to be with this great audience in New York City.

Well, there's an old belief that greatness is something you're born with, that in order to succeed, you have to be gifted with natural talent.

Well, we're going to upend that myth today.

I believe that reaching for our full potential is what we're called to do as human beings,

And that's why I'm so excited about my guest today, Adam Grant.

He's written this book called Hidden Potential.

He's someone I've admired forever.

And let me tell you a little bit about Adam.

He is an organizational psychologist, a Wharton Business School professor, a New York Times bestselling author of five books,

and host of the popular podcast, Rethinking and Work Life.

And so I want to start, Adam.

Hi.

Welcome.

Hi.

What an honor.

Thank you, Oprah.

I just want to start with this quote from Serena Williams, where she's talking about, you know, what this book meant for her.

She says, This brilliant book will shatter your assumptions about what it takes to improve and succeed.

I wish I could go back in time and gift it to my younger self.

It would have helped me find a more joyful path to progress.

I just love that.

I'm sure you did too.

Yeah, I'm pretty much done at that point.

Do we all have a little Serena in us?

I actually think we have more Serena in us than we realize.

There's a classic study looking at high achievers across fields, so elite tennis players and swimmers, mathematicians and scientists, musicians and sculptors.

And it turns out that very few of them stood out when they were first learning their craft.

They didn't win early competitions.

They didn't necessarily end up getting identified as having superior talent.

And ultimately, they ended up achieving much greater things.

And I think their potential was hidden, not only to some of their family members and friends, but also they didn't realize how great they could become.

Well, it's so interesting.

I had just finished reading your book, and then Gail and I went to the Beyoncé concert last night.

Woo! And it's so interesting.

When I left there, I thought, wow, that's a person who has maximized to the I don't know what transcendent degree their potential.

And we both left feeling like...Gail said she left feeling like she could eat raw meat.

But what I felt like,

that something in me by watching her was awakened to a greater sense of potential.

And so I guess that's what true inspiration, what it is to be inspired is that you see the potential within yourself.

Also what your book does, you walk away from reading it feeling like, huh, there's more in me than I knew.

Now I have a good friend who likes to remind me of how far I have come in life.

And I thought of him when I, when I read the first chapter of the book where you say, you can't tell where people will land from where they begin.

that in a minute.

Church.

I see y'all nodding like church.

You can't tell where people will land from where they begin.

With the right opportunity and motivation to learn, anyone can build the skills to achieve greater things.

Potential is not a matter of where you start, but of how far you travel.

We need to focus less on starting points and more on distance travel.

Can I get an amen to that?

When did you learn that lesson for yourself, Adam?

I think I probably first learned it when I made a questionable decision to become a springboard diver.

So I was not naturally talented.

I walked like Frankenstein.

I couldn't, I literally couldn't touch my toes without bending my knees.

And I was afraid of heights.

So not exactly the right sport for me.

I was already too short for basketball and too slow for track, and I felt like I'd ruled out everything else.

So I showed up to try out for the diving team as a freshman in high school.

And I had an incredible coach, Eric Best, who said, I will never cut a diver who wants to be here.

And he saw more potential in me than I saw in myself.

And, you know, I would just sort of sit there at the end of the board, shaking, shaking, afraid to hurl myself into the air and somersault and twist.

I remember one day just sitting at the end of the board

and my teammates were getting annoyed and Eric was even losing his patience, which he never did.

And finally he said, Adam, are you going to do this dive?

And I was like, ever?

Like, yes, of course, one day I will do this dive.

And he said, great.

What are you waiting for?

All of a sudden, I realized there was not going to be a magic day

when I woke up and suddenly felt ready.

I would have to become ready by taking the leap.

Oh, I love that moment.

Yes.

And that was when you realized about Hidden Potential.

So what was it about the science of achieving greater things,

Hidden Potential, that you felt compelled to sit down and actually compose a book about it,

because I consider this an offering to your public, that you wanted to offer to us?

What is it you most wanted us to know?

I think probably the most important thing for me was I think a lot of us feel like imposters

when we take on new challenges.

And it's easy to fall victim.

Actually, how many of you, I'm just curious, have felt like imposters at some point as parents or in your jobs?

OK, a fair number of you.

If you haven't, by the way, I'm a little worried you might be a narcissist.

But that's another conversation.

I think

that the basic feeling of imposter syndrome is there's a gap between my own judgment of my capabilities

and what other people think I'm capable of.

And most of us, when we feel that, we think, well, they're overestimating me.

But the research done by a former student of ours, Basima Tufik, suggests that more likely it's you underestimating yourself.

Because other people are better judges of your abilities than you are.

They don't have your blind spots.

They don't have your biases.

And so if multiple people believe in you, you should probably believe them.

I love that so much.

You know, it's so interesting because when I was doing the Oprah show, there was a long time where I just would sign autographs afterwards and, you know, never look up and sign up.

And after a while, I decided what I really wanted is just to hear what people said

100

and what was going on in their lives.

101

And so I just started talking to people after the show.

102

even just, you know, moving through the world, people would say, you know, this show changed my life, this show changed my life, this show changed my life.

103

And I wasn't really paying attention to it.

104

I thought it was just something people were saying.

105

And when I stopped to ask people, specifically tell me how that happened,

106

people would have all these incredible examples of what someone has said or something I had said, or a guest like yourself, expert had said.

107

And I started to believe that, oh, this is more than just a show.

108

This is a platform that can be used as a force for helping people to see their lives differently.

109

It's amazing that you didn't know that, Oprah.

110

Honestly, I mean you...

111

No, I didn't at first.

112

I was just doing the work and doing the work and not really attentive to what that work was doing.

113

I mean, it's just hard to imagine as an audience member who grew up watching you.

114

Well, thank you.

115

You gave a lot more than cars to your audience.

116

Yes, yeah.

117

And I think for a lot of people, you gave hope and inspiration during your show, but I think also as a role model, watching the success you achieved, knowing where you came from.

118

One of the things I've been really stunned by as a psychologist is there's some research suggesting

119

that when people tell us to aim for our best or to dream big, we actually aim lower than if we're exposed to a specific role model.

120

And once we see that person, we say, okay, maybe I'm capable of more than I think, and I think you've been that person for more people than I can count.

121

Well, thank you for saying that.

122

I'm just saying that for a long, in the beginning when I was doing the show, I was like, okay, gotta do the show, gotta do the show people would say things I wasn't really taking it all in.

123

And once I started to understand, that's when I think the power of the show got better because I was paying more attention to what people were saying.

124

You know, teachers are my heroes.

125

So when I heard you talk about kindergarten teachers being able to, what happens to you in kindergarten being a good predictor of your future.

126

Can we talk about that?

127

Your future success?

128

Yeah, we have to.

129

So as you know, there's an incredible study by economists

130

of people looking at whether they get into college and then eventually how much money they earn in their 20s.

131

And it turns out that you can predict that just by knowing how many years their kindergarten teacher has been teaching.

132

It's like, wait, having a more experienced kindergarten teacher?

133

That makes you more successful.

134

That helps you grow.

135

Why is that?

136

Well, my first thought was they have to be masters at teaching cognitive skills.

137

They figure out how to help kids learn to read early.

138

They help them figure out how to do math.

139

But no, it turns out that the lasting impact of experienced kindergarten teachers is not cognitive skills.

140

It's character skills.

141

Kindergarten teachers set their kids up for success later in life by teaching them to be pro-social, proactive, disciplined, determined.

142

And those are the lessons that really stick.

143

Well, I love how you associate character skills with what used to be called soft skills.

144

Let's talk about where soft skills got its name.

145

This drives me crazy.

146

So it turns out it originally comes out of the US military, where soft skills were literally anything that did not involve operating a machine.

147

Yeah.

148

So even finance is a soft skill, according to that definition.

149

Yeah.

150

And so they meant anything you're doing that relates to behavior, leadership, collaboration, that was a soft skill.

151

And they thought it was extremely important, but soft sounds weak.

152

And I think it got a bad rap because of that.

153

And so rather than calling them soft skills, character skills, you say character is more than just having principles.

154

I love this so much that it's a learned capacity to live by your principles.

155

Tell us about what you call character skills.

156

Well, I think a lot of people confuse character with personality.

157

So we all have personality traits.

158

They're your tendency for how you would typically think or feel or act in a typical day.

159

And they're not your destiny.

160

They're just your tendency.

161

So a lot of times we find that to reach our hidden potential, we actually have to reject our personality traits.

162

I didn't choose, for example, to be a shy introvert.

163

I was born with that tendency, but it sure stood in my way when I wanted to become a a professor and a public speaker.

164

And so I had to learn some character skills to try to transcend the limitations of my personality

165

and become a little bit more engaging on stage, which is still a work in progress.

166

But I hope I've made some progress.

167

But you did it by actually going actively out speaking on stage.

168

I had to.

169

I didn't know any other way to learn it.

170

Psychologists, when they talk about exposure therapy, they talk about systematic desensitization, where you kind of dip your toe in the pool,

171

and then flooding, where you just dive into the deep end and I chose the flooding approach, which did not always go as planned.

172

I recently talked with Dr. Abraham Vagese, who wrote this incredible novel called The Covenant of Water.

173

You should read it.

174

And he told me something that I found fascinating.

175

He was here a month ago talking about how he develops characters, and that sometimes the character doesn't hold up under pressure,

176

he says when he's writing, and that only the characters that can hold up under pressure are the characters that remain in the story.

177

And that that is also true for life.

178

It is holding up under pressure.

179

You write something similar on page 20.

180

You say, knowing your principles doesn't necessarily mean you know how to practice them, particularly under stress or pressure.

181

It's easy to be proactive and determined when things are going well.

182

The true test of character is whether you manage to stand by those values when the deck is stacked against you.

183

If personality is how you respond on a typical day, this is my favorite quote.

184

If personality is how you respond on a typical day, character is how you show up on a hard day.

185

Oh, the church said amen again.

186

How do we stay true to our values on those hard days?

187

You know, Oprah, I have to turn the tables on you and ask you about this, because you have talked about how when you were starting out as a TV reporter,

188

you got demoted, which sounded like one of the hardest days of your career.

189

It was.

190

I said Gail was there.

191

I said, meet me in the bathroom now.

192

Now, yeah.

193

Yeah.

194

So how did you stay true to your values in that moment?

195

Well, here's the, here's the, I stay true to my values because there was nothing else to do or be.

196

I just used your quote this morning, literally.

197

One of my daughters was saying

198

that she had taken another job even though she had a contract with another job

199

and that her boss is saying you have to hold to the contract.

200

And she was like, what do I do?

201

And I say, you obviously hold to the contract because that is your word.

202

And I said, because character is what shows up on the hard days, not on the easy days.

203

And so I always believe you do the right thing even when nobody is looking, and especially when nobody is looking, because that's what you know to do.

204

That's what you know to do.

205

It makes a lot of sense.

206

I think a lot of people struggle with this because they get advice, well, you gotta walk the talk.

207

Yeah.

208

And I think sometimes then it becomes really hard to live up to the words that you put out into the world.

209

So I've started to wonder if we should reverse that and only talk the things we already walk.

210

Ooh.

211

Say that again, Adam.

212

I like it.

213

I guess it's, I don't know, but what I meant to say was something like, I think that a lot of people struggle to walk the talk, and maybe we should only talk what we already walk.

214

Well, yes, and also you see on these Instagram reels, everybody's talking, talking, talking about everything.

215

And nobody's walking, walking, walking to talk, right?

216

Right, right, and I think part of that is because particularly in America, we don't like to be uncomfortable,

217

but you see facing discomfort as a character skill.

218

It's a vital character skill.

219

So let's go back to me being a shy introvert trying to learn how to teach.

220

One of the ways that I just flooded myself was I signed up to teach a four-hour session for Air Force colonels.

221

I was in my mid-20s.

222

They were about twice my age.

223

They had thousands of hours of flying experience.

224

And I was extremely nervous going in there.

225

And so I did what came naturally to me, which was I started to talk about my credentials and explain to them why I was qualified to teach this session.

226

Otherwise, why were they here?

227

And the feedback afterward was brutal.

228

One of the Air Force colonels had written, there was more knowledge in the audience than on the podium.

229

Whoa.

230

Technically, that's true.

231

There are a lot of you.

232

There's one of me, and you have a lot more experience than I do.

233

And then another wrote, I gained nothing from this session, But I trust the instructor gained some useful insight.

234

So what I wanted to do in that moment was crawl into a hole.

235

I remember thinking, I would love to be an actual bear

236

and hibernate for a few months and come out when I feel better.

237

But what did you do?

238

What I did was I realized I'd already committed to do

239

another session for a different group of Air Force Colonels a week later.

240

And as uncomfortable as it was, I had to get comfortable with the discomfort.

241

Ooh.

242

So I've been reading some research that suggested that feedback is not as helpful as advice.

243

That when you ask for feedback, you get a bunch of critics telling what you did wrong yesterday.

244

When you ask for advice, you turn people into coaches, and they tell you what you could do better tomorrow.

245

That's why this is such a good leadership book.

246

Feedback is not as good as advice.

247

That's great.

248

Yeah.

249

The advice I got was really helpful, actually.

250

One person in the audience said, you know, why don't you try a different opening?

251

Why don't you call out the elephant in the room instead of trying to you know talk about your credentials? And

252

so I did the only thing I could think of as

253

uncomfortable as it was I walked into my next session and I said hey, I know what you all are thinking right now What could I possibly learn from a professor who's 12 years old?

254

The Air Force colonels did not find that amusing yeah

255

But after after what felt like an eternity one of them piped up

256

and said oh come on that's ridiculous You got to be at least 13

257

And it broke the ice

258

and the relationship with them was completely different We had a

259

real give-and-take as opposed to me just standing up lecturing

260

and afterward I got different feedback I was told

261

that although I was junior in experience I dealt with the evidence in an interesting way

262

and I felt like because I embraced

263

that discomfort I actually ended up growing more don't you find

264

too though this happens to me a lot of times of people who friends who write books memoirs in particular

265

and also also friends who are in the film business, they'll give you a thing to look at or to review and say, give me your feedback.

266

But what they really want is for you to affirm for them everything they want to hear about it.

267

So it would be much better if they, as you were saying that, I was thinking, it would be much better if people say, advise me as to what you think would make this better.

268

That would be so much better.

269

I think that what a lot of people do is they're

270

so afraid of critics that they try to surround themselves with cheerleaders.

271

Ah.

272

And the problem with that, we have a very responsive audience this afternoon.

273

Y'all are good.

274

Yeah, this is your doing, right?

275

No, no, no. I think the problem with that, just at a basic level, is that a cheerleader only sees and celebrates the best version of yourself.

276

Yes.

277

A critic only sees and attacks the worst version of yourself.

278

And what we really want are coaches.

279

Coaches, yes.

280

Who see a better version of you and then help you realize that potential.

281

Well, you know, our country is obsessed with perfection, so many people and you know, the whole social media is all about people showing you their perfection.

282

And you say it's a mirage and we need to honor the beauty of our imperfections.

283

This quote I love so much that you write on page 67.

284

Perfectionists berate themselves for making mistakes, which make it harder to learn from them.

285

And they fail to realize that the purpose of reviewing your mistakes isn't to shame your past self,

286

it's to educate your future self.

287

How did you learn that?

288

Well, I remember growing up, my mom used to say, look, you know, whatever grade you get in school,

289

as long as you tried your best, then I'll be proud of you.

290

And then she would add, but if you didn't get an A, I'll know it wasn't your best.

291

And she said it with a smile, and I think she was sort of joking, but also sort of not.

292

And I really internalized the expectation that I needed to be flawless.

293

And I beat myself up a lot for that.

294

Diving was a miserable sport in this sense, because there's no such thing as a perfect 10, it turns out.

295

A 10 is for excellence, not perfection.

296

And so I was chasing a mirage that literally didn't exist.

297

And I think life is a lot like diving.

298

There is no such thing as a perfect 10.

299

Thank you.

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: Oprah Wants YOU to MAXIMIZE Your Potential | The Life You Want Class | Oprah Daily - Learn English Speaking with Video

Context & Background

Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication

Step-by-step Shadowing Guide

What is the Shadowing Technique?