Shadowing Practice: Stop Dreaming and Start Doing | Self-Sabotage - Learn English Speaking with Video

Have you ever felt like there is an invisible barrier between you and your dreams?

Today I'm going to talk about how we ourselves sabotage our progress

and share critical strategies of how we can overcome all of these psychological barriers.

Let's dive in.

Why do we stop ourselves from chasing our dreams?

Most of the time, fear is the answer.

It's like our brain's alarm system is telling us, I'm getting out of my comfort zone, I'm uncomfortable.

I don't want to do this.

This feeling is very paralyzing and I've struggled with it for a very long time.

So I'm from Ukraine and when I was 15 I decided

that I wanted to go to university in the United States

but doing it required a lot of things that I didn't know.

I had to improve my English skills, take a lot of exams in a new language, learn about the application process, a lot of new things.

For a very long time I was completely paralyzed.

I was scared that I wouldn't get in, and I was scared that there was so much stuff that I didn't know, so much unfamiliar territory.

But I decided to take every single day and commit myself to getting out of my comfort zone.

So because I did not sabotage myself and didn't think about the fear, tried to ignore it, it brought me to an acceptance letter.

In the book The Mountain is You, Brianna V is just talking about the self-sabotaging behaviors that we do,

which are the avoidance tactics our brains developed to keep us protected from our deepest fears.

It's a common coping mechanism that we developed to soothe discomfort.

This makes us stay in abusive relationships

if we are too scared to be alone

or it might make us never start our dream projects because we are too scared of failure.

This happens because comfort is the driving force of human behavior.

Human brains inherently seek what is most comfortable for us, therefore safe, even if it's objectively a worse option for us.

But a bigger issue happens if we're too scared to even start doing something

because we're scared of the negative opinions of other people.

My parents would always tell me, never tell anyone your aspirations and dreams except the closest people.

Also, my parents would always tell me about the power of the evil eye, how someone can look at you and from their bad intentions,

from greed, from jealousy, from anger, they sank negative energy and you're not going to succeed.

Well, to be honest, I don't really believe in this evil eye thing.

I don't know.

But it sort of makes sense.

Imagine that you tell someone your dream or inspiration and they think it's impossible.

People have different limitations of what they think is possible.

So not telling everyone what you're planning is probably the best way to go.

Because you might sense their negativity and it might demotivate you.

But never give anyone influence over your decisions.

Imagine in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, will you regret not following your dreams because you were scared someone will think you're stupid or crazy or cringe?

Exactly.

Let's say you're building a new project, like I recently started this YouTube channel.

For the longest time I was really scared to do it because I didn't know how to make good videos

and I didn't know whether I'm going to be doing it well, so it really stopped me from pursuing this dream.

But the key is to start before you're ready.

No one comes into a new project or a new field or a new career with knowing everything about it.

Everyone is a beginner at some point.

That is why the power of the word yet is very

very critical don't say oh i'm not gonna start this

because i don't know how to do it say i don't

know how to do it yet this transforms the meaning of the sentence into saying

that with a little bit of time

and a little bit of effort i will get there

and i will know how to do it often our brains make us believe

that the goal we're trying to achieve is way too hard way too big

and it paralyzes us into starting even doing something.

But the issue here is very simple.

The issue is that you're lacking proper planning.

So instead of making big goals, just cut them down into small measurable steps.

Instead of saying I want to be famous on YouTube by the end of the year, you have to say okay I want to post 15 videos in the next month

and then I'm going to post all of them and see

which one is performing the best and try to to make similar videos and see why my best videos perform the best.

And I'm gonna do it every month for the whole year.

This is a much better approach

because you're gonna be able to celebrate every small win

that you do and when you have a huge goal you don't see a progress really fast.

But if you break it down to small goals, you always get a dopamine hit with every check mark that you do.

A lot of our self-concept, our perception of ourselves, is guided by something that we internalized in childhood.

Once upon a time, there was a boy, and this boy was told by his athletic coach that he wasn't good for sports.

He internalized it, and he, for the whole life, he believed that he was bad at sports.

But in adulthood, this man decided to break this pattern of negative self-talk, and he found evidence that he is indeed athletic.

In the result, he was able to run his first 5k race, and he broke this negative belief about himself with time and practice.

Most often, we have to re-evaluate our self-perception in order to stop ourselves from self-sabotage.

Maybe you're going to become less light or understood by your family or friends, but Wiest explains that the people who are meant for you are going to meet you on the other side.

You're going to build a new comfort zone around the things that actually move you forward, but your new way of life is going to cost you your old one.

It's about understanding that stepping into a new way of life means leaving some things behind, which could mean our past relationships or our past selves.

But what you're going to gain is much more valuable, which is actually pursuing and achieving your dreams rather than only dreaming about them.

And hey, if you have a dream that you're working on or you have some psychological barrier that you're trying to overcome, please drop a comment below.

I would love to read all of them and try to support you on this new journey.

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: Stop Dreaming and Start Doing | Self-Sabotage - Learn English Speaking with Video

Context & Background

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Step-by-step Shadowing Guide

What is the Shadowing Technique?