Shadowing Practice: Self-Esteem: How It Changes And 2 Ways to Boost It - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Hi, I'm Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist, and I make mental health education videos.

Today I'm talking about self-esteem, how you get it, how it ebbs and flows over the course of your life,

and what you can do to make it better.

And this is based on several viewer questions asking me to talk about self-esteem.

Self-esteem is how you value your self-worth.

It falls on a spectrum from low to healthy to overinflated.

With low self-esteem, you can feel worthless, inadequate and non-deserving of happiness.

With a healthy level of self-esteem you can feel confident and feel like you deserve the things that come to you.

With an over-inflated level of self-esteem you can feel entitled to the happiness even at the expense of others

and you can be overly self-promotional and very defensive when you don't get the things that you feel you deserve.

Positive experiences create healthy self-esteem and negative experiences create low self-esteem.

It's still unclear exactly how you develop self-esteem, but we do know it's influenced by a combination of factors like your temperament,

which is your hardwiring, your family environment, relationships, and life experiences.

You can think of self-esteem as a trait

that you possess that's part of your makeup and it's influenced by your external environment and can change over time.

Here's the normal pattern of change in self-esteem across your lifespan.

As a child, you start out with a very high level of self-esteem, essentially because you don't know any better and everything's positive and fun.

However, as a child matures, self-esteem declines as you're better able to evaluate yourself against your environment and internalize feedback.

These experiences shape your self-appraisal and at this stage your self-esteem is relatively unstable,

meaning it's easily shaped by positive and negative experiences.

Negative experiences can be from your parents, teachers, or other students.

Traumatic experiences at this age have a much more significant

and long-lasting effect on your self-esteem than similar events happening at a later age.

In adolescence, your self-esteem continues to decline and researchers believe

that this is related to issues with body image and changes that come with puberty.

Around this time, you're transitioning from the nurturing elementary school environment to a more challenging middle and high school experience.

Although the level of your self-esteem drops in adolescence, it becomes more stable, meaning that it's less changeable during this period.

Another way of putting it is that your view of yourself is very fluid in childhood, but it becomes more solidified in adolescence.

So if you develop an abnormally low self-esteem beyond the usual dip that you have at this age,

it's harder for you to recover from that to increase your self-esteem in the adolescent stage.

It's possible, but it takes more work.

Self-esteem in adulthood increases gradually over time, peaking in the late 60s.

And this is thought to be because of changes like establishing a career, developing a mastery over something,

having a clarity of purpose, and creating a legacy through your family.

And these are just some examples of achievements you experience over the course of your adulthood that promote feelings of self-worth.

The stability of your self-esteem rises through young adulthood and then starts to decline as you reach midlife and older age.

So this just means that how you feel about yourself is pretty stable and consistent in early adulthood, but once you reach midlife,

the midlife crisis, your self-esteem is is more influenced by changes in your life circumstances.

Once you get to the 70s and beyond, your self-esteem starts to decline again, and this is probably due to changing life roles like retirement,

grandchildren, or the lack of children or grandchildren.

And this is a time that people will reflect on their lives

and can have a lot of regrets about the choices that they made.

Health problems and the loss of a spouse all things that can negatively affect your self-esteem at this age.

But not all people in their 70s and beyond have low self-esteem.

Some older individuals can still maintain a high level

or sense of self-worth and just accept their limitations at this stage of their life.

One of the things about understanding this normal trajectory of self-esteem going up

and down is that it shows us

that adolescence is a key time to jump in and rally around youths and do things to bolster their self-esteem.

Similarly, if you have an elderly relative who recently retired and seems to have lost their way,

know that it's a good time to offer extra support in the area around helping them feel good about themselves.

If you struggle with low self-esteem, here are two things that you can do to increase your self-esteem or help someone increase their self-esteem.

Number one, recognize and utilize your strengths.

People who recognize their strengths and use them tend to feel better about themselves.

If your inner dialogue is saying things like, you're unlovable, you're inconsistent, or you don't measure up,

then you're going to have a hard time recognizing your strengths.

In fact, oftentimes that kind of negative thinking takes over your thoughts

and can convince you that you have no strengths or that the strengths that you have are not very meaningful.

It's important that you not only recognize your strengths, but you put them into action.

And to recognize your strengths, you can ask yourself questions like, what are you good at?

What do you enjoy doing?

What have you done that's been the most successful for you?

You want to make sure you identify the characteristics or behavior behind the action.

So for example, you may say that you're good at playing video games, but playing video games is not a strength.

But what about that makes you good?

Maybe it's your ability to strategize.

Maybe you have good hand-eye coordination that makes you very quick and responsive.

Here's another example.

Being a good swimmer is not a strength, but the physical agility and discipline it takes to be good at swimming are strengths.

Another way to identify your strengths is to look at a list of strengths and check them off.

I have a strengths handout that you can use for that purpose, and you can download it from my website.

Once you have a list of your strengths,

the next thing you want to do is develop a plan to use at least one of your strengths every day day.

So for example, let's say your strength is flexibility.

You think of yourself as someone who can adapt to change very well.

A simple plan could be

that could use your strength could be to leave your Saturday schedule open

and allow other people to decide how you will spend your day.

Or let's say your strength is patience.

Your plan could be to listen to your loved one tell a story for the fifth time without interrupting them

and you'll even ask follow-up questions to show your interest even

though you know already know the answers to the questions

and you're not going to let them know

that you've already heard this another way to recognize your strengths is to recognize the strengths

and others you may think

that focusing on other people's strengths may make you feel bad about what you don't have

but actually focusing on other people's strengths keeps

you in the mindset of thinking in terms of strengths instead of being focused on weaknesses.

Focusing on other people's weaknesses does not improve your self-esteem

because critical thinking is critical thinking whether you're being judgmental of others

or yourself so

if you're stuck in a mindset of being critical

you will ultimately be more critical of yourself than you are of other people

but if you set your sights on recognizing the strengths in other people it helps you see your strengths

so here's an example you notice

that Susie is very good at multitasking she always seems to be able to finish her work

and have extra time left over you say I wish I were better at multitasking seeing Susie do it

so well it just makes me feel bad about myself and

that can make you feel bad if you only focus on Susie

100

but if you pull back and get a broader view you'll notice

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that John is not good at multitasking

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but he's very good at making people feel welcome

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and Nicole has a good eye for detail you start to see that no one is good at everything.

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We all have our strengths and weaknesses and as such, we all have ways that we can use our strengths to contribute to the collective good.

105

And the better you get at noticing strengths, the more sensitive you become to noticing your own strengths.

106

And recognizing your strengths and positive qualities helps you bolster the value that you give yourself.

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Number two, learn to accept compliments.

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People with low self-esteem have trouble accepting compliments they usually make you feel uncomfortable you tend to downplay them

109

or say things to shut down the compliments

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so what you need to do is learn to hear the compliments

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and appreciate them and an easy way to do this is to prepare statements ahead of time

112

that you would say in response to the compliments

113

it could be as simple as thank you that's kind of you I appreciate you saying

114

that tolerating compliments does two things it helps you get used to hearing positive feedback

115

and it also helps the person giving you the compliment to feel good about extending kindness to you.

116

It's a gift for someone to compliment you

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and it takes a certain level of security on the complimenters

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part to feel good enough about themselves to give you the spotlight.

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Therefore you want to allow

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this other person to show you this kind of generosity your self-assessment is at the heart of your self-esteem

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and even if someone took it away from you

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because of the way they treated you you can take

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it back it's not easy it's a series of small steps

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that add up over time like compounding interest for more on temperament watch

125

this video i hope this helps you with self-esteem issues see you next time

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “Self-Esteem: How It Changes And 2 Ways to Boost It”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: self, esteem, strength, experience, compliment. This video has 125 sentences and 1767 words to shadow. The speech runs for 10:50. The speaker talks at a natural 163 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
esteem verb	/ɪˈstiːm/	To set a high value on; to regard with respect or reverence.
compliment noun	/ˈkɑmpləmənt/	An expression of praise, congratulation, or respect.
decline verb	/dɪˈklaɪn/	To move downwards, to fall, to drop.
adulthood noun		The state or condition, for humans and other animals, of physical and psychological maturity: being an adult.
weakness noun	/ˈwik.nɪs/	The condition of being weak.
stable noun	/ˈsteɪ.bəl/	A building, wing or dependency set apart and adapted for lodging and feeding (and training) ungulates, especially horses.
happiness noun	/ˈhæpinɪs/	The emotion of being happy; joy; elation.
feedback noun	/ˈfiːdˌbæk/	Critical assessment of a process or activity or of their results.
mindset noun	/ˈmaɪn(d)ˌsɛt/	A way of thinking; an attitude or opinion, especially a habitual one.
consistent adjective	/kənˈsɪs.tənt/	Of a regularly occurring, dependable nature.
relative noun	/ˈɹɛl.ə.tɪv/	Someone connected by blood, marriage, or adoption; someone in the same family.
assessment noun	/əˈsɛsmənt/	The act of assessing or an amount (of tax, levy or duty etc) assessed.
establish verb	/ɪˈstæb.lɪʃ/	To make stable or firm; to confirm.
sensitive adjective	/ˈsɛn.sɪt.ɪv/	Having the faculty of sensation; pertaining to the senses.
transition noun	/tɹænˈzɪʃ.ən/	The process of change from one form, state, style or place to another.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
follow up verb	To take further actions remaining after an event; to continue, revisit, or persist; especially, to maintain communication or verify.
go up verb	To move upwards.
pull back verb	To retreat.
shut down verb	To close, terminate, or end; to stop operating, either permanently or temporarily.
take over verb	To assume control of something, such as a business or enterprise, and sometimes by force.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

What do you enjoy doing?
What have you done that's been the most successful for you?
Maybe it's your ability to strategize.

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	have you done · you've already heard
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is based · is thought
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	People who recognize · someone who can

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 18 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: establish /ɪˈstæb.lɪʃ/, transition /tɹænˈzɪʃ.ən/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, patience /ˈpeɪ̯.ʃəns/, coordination /kəʊˌɔːdɪˈneɪʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, elementary /ˌɛləˈmɛntəɹi/, stability /stəˈbɪlɪti/, similarly /ˈsɪm.ə.lə.li/, uncomfortable /ʌnˈkʌm.fɚ.tə.bl̩/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like esteem, compliment, decline.

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: Self-Esteem: How It Changes And 2 Ways to Boost It - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Sentences worth repeating

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?