Shadowing Practice: The 4 Inner Empires That Make You Unstoppable | Robin Sharma - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Our society does say to us that the doorway to success swings outward.
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In other words if we get nice things we will feel really good.
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Our society says when you get a lot of success
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and status and position and applause and fame and houses
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and shiny objects well then you are going to have it made
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and you were gonna wake up on a Monday morning feeling absolutely fantastic.
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I do believe that the doorway to success doesn't swing outward, it swings inward.
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What I mean to say by
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that is the more you can grow in what I call in my methodology your four interior empires,
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the more everything you touch on the outside will reflect who you are within.
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So as you grow the first interior empire which is mindset, which is your psychology, your behavior will reflect those beliefs.
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If you have beliefs of toxicity, if you have beliefs of scarcity, if you have beliefs of selfishness, if you are stuck with intellectual programming,
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which is the more I give in my work, the more I will lose, those things will hold you back.
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So of course you need to calibrate and upgrade and optimize your mindset because that is your psychology.
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And as I've suggested to you, your psychology determines your income and your impact.
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But though a lot of pundits in the marketplace say mindset is everything,
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with deep respect I suggest there are actually three other interior empires after mindset
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that you really need to work on each day to live
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an abundant strong healthy excellent rich inner life second interior empire is your heart set
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we have a beating heart we have emotions as human beings if we are filled with shame anger sadness as disappointment,
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frustration, those lower grade emotions, of course we can't handcraft beautiful lives on the outside.
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So we want to replace those and purify our hearts and our heart set,
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and I'm going to share a bunch of tools that will be super helpful to you,
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but we want to purify our heart set so in that dimension of the second interior empire, we are filled with awe,
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wonder, gratitude, love, bewilderment, astonishment,
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joyfulness, but it's not only mindset and heartset
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that we want to work on to build a strong inner core so that our outer life rises with us.
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There's the third interior empire, which is our health set.
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We want to cheat death in many ways
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we want to extend our longevity in many ways we want to increase our energy
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because sometimes energy is even more important than intelligence stamina is a word I want you to think about
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when I mentor the billionaires and the elite athletes
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and the movement makers these people all have another golden trait
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and the golden trait is stamina they simply do not stop
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when they are in hot pursuit of their ethical ambitions
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so you want to work on your health set
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so you have more energy more stamina more vitality
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so you feel good in your skin so
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that your brain is working strong your gut is at peak
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and so you extend longevity because
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if you could add another 10 years to your life
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or even 20 years to life even 30 years to your life what would
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that do to your income what would do to the compounding of your investments not
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that i'm giving any investment or medical advice in this program
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if you give yourself another 20 or 30
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or 40 years through biohacking good rest excellent nutrition exercise nature sunlight etc what would
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that do for your sense of adventure your time with your
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loved ones your impact on the world mindset is your psychology first interior empire.
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Heartset is your what?
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Emotionality, second interior empire.
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Hellset is your physicality, your third interior empire.
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And that brings us to the fourth interior empire, which I call soulset.
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Soulset is your spirituality.
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And more and more as the world becomes more uncertain and more volatile,
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I believe it is incredibly important for you to battleproof and strengthen,
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then polish, calibrate, and optimize an amazing soul set.
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But as I mentioned earlier, we have an egoic self, which has formed through the programming of PENEM,
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parents, environment, nation, associations, and media, and micro -trauma and macro -trauma.
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And that has formed as we've journeyed through life from the perfection and innocence of childhood.
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And that is not our true self.
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That self is selfish, and that self is fearful, and that self is often scarce and that self is perhaps petty.
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It's not so creative.
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It's not so productive.
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Our egoic selves are our smallest selves and our fakest selves.
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Deep below the layers of doubt, fear, disbelief, we've got our heroic self and the journey of a human being who wants to lead the richest,
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happiest, strongest, most creative and productive life is in many ways not transformation.
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What a radical thought.
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The goal of personal growth and leadership development and self -mastery isn't really transformation, it's self -remembering.
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Because as you've left the perfection of who you once were
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and gone out into the world and experience the hardships
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and the disappointments and the programming
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and the influence of society who wants to make you the way they want to make you, you have gone through a process of self -forgetting.
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And so the real key is to return home.
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The real key is not to become someone that you are not, but go through the layers of doubt,
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fear, disbelief to remember who you once were.
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And that brings us to who you truly are, which is not your egoic self, but your highest self your heroic self
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and when you work on your soul set you will build intimacy
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and remember steadily day by day who you truly are and
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when you remember who you truly are you become powerful you become naturally creative just like you were
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when you were a little kid before the world taught you not to color outside the lines
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and become like everyone else and march in line and dress like everyone else.
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When you steadily build intimacy with your heroic self, your true self through work on your soul set,
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you become kinder, you become selfless, you become much more intuitive,
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you become truly powerful and you become unkillable.
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And literally you are no longer dependent on the need of the world for approval
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and even you don't depend on the world being okay
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and sunshine and in order for your peace your inner peace comes from a place deep at your core
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when you get to this stage and you most certainly will
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if you keep practicing every day remember
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you get stronger what you practice look at your life right
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now where you are winning shows what you focused on and what you've invested your daily practice time in.
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And where you're weak, it just means you need to practice more.
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And what I also really must share with you on this point about soul set, the more you go deeper into who you truly are,
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the more you build that relationship with your heroic self, the less fear you will feel on a daily basis.
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Now, how is that practical to you as the doorway to success swings inward.
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Well, the more you grow your inner core and heroic self, the more you will be an instrument of service to other people.
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You won't be caught up in jealousy and scarcity, me, me, me, trying to give as little as possible.
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When you do soul set work, and I'm about to share the tools for mindset work, heart set work, health set work,
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and soul set work, but when you do the work on your soul set, you realize we are all brothers and sisters on a small planet.
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You start to care about Mother Earth.
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You start to actually care at a visceral cellular level about your neighbors
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and your teammates and your customers and your followers and your suppliers.
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It just comes from a very deep place of service, which is the eighth form of wealth and the wealth money can't buy and so
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when you come from a place of deep service from a spiritual place as strange as this might sound
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but as an entrepreneur as a business leader for example as someone who is in the marketplace
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or no matter what you do you could be an artist
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you could be a screenplay writer you could be an astronaut
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but when you come from a place deep within of spiritually feeling connected to other people,
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then you can do no wrong to other people because you are so connected with your highest self.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “The 4 Inner Empires That Make You Unstoppable”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: self, empire, interior, mindset, soul. This video has 109 sentences and 1465 words to shadow. The speech runs for 9:16. The speaker talks at a natural 158 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 |
|---|---|---|
| mindset noun | /ˈmaɪn(d)ˌsɛt/ | A way of thinking; an attitude or opinion, especially a habitual one. |
| heroic adjective | /hɪˈɹoʊ.ɪk/ | Of or relating to a hero or heroine; supremely noble. |
| belief noun | /bɪˈliːf/ | Mental acceptance of a claim as true. |
| swing verb | /ˈswɪŋ/ | To rotate about an off-centre fixed point. |
| psychology noun | /saɪˈkɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/ | The study of the human mind. |
| doorway noun | /ˈdɔɹweɪ/ | The passage of a door; a door-shaped entrance into a house or a room. |
| layer noun | /ˈleɪ̯ɚ/ | A single thickness of some material covering a surface. |
| reflect verb | /ɹɪˈflɛkt/ | To bend back (light, etc.) from a surface. |
| connect verb | /kəˈnɛkt/ | To join (to another object): to attach, or to be intended to attach or capable of attaching, to another object. |
| extend verb | /ɛkˈstɛnd/ | To increase in extent. |
| productive adjective | /pɹəˈdʌk.tɪv/ | Capable of producing something, especially in abundance; fertile. |
| transformation noun | /ˌtɹæns.fɔɹˈmeɪ.ʃən/ | The act of transforming or the state of being transformed. |
| emotion noun | /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/ | A person's internal state of being and involuntary physiological response to an object or a situation, based on or tied to physical state and sensory data. |
| trauma noun | /ˈtɹɔm.ə/ | Any injury to the body of a living thing. |
| disappointment noun | /ˌdɪsəˈpɔɪntmənt/ | The feeling or state of being disappointed: a feeling of sadness or frustration when something is not as good as one hoped or expected, or when something bad… |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. |
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 suggested · has formed · you've left |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | empire which is · empire, which is · self, which has |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are filled · won't be caught |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 16 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, can't, we've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: eighth /eɪtθ/, athlete /ˈæθ.liːt/, ethical /ˈɛθɪkəl/, strengthen /ˈstɹɛŋ(k)θən/, methodology /ˌmɛθ.əˈdɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: transformation /ˌtɹæns.fɔɹˈmeɪ.ʃən/, emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, perfection /pɚˈfɛk.ʃən/, polish /ˈpɑ.lɪʃ/, sunshine /ˈsʌnʃaɪn/
- Long words — get the stress right: psychology /saɪˈkɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/, transformation /ˌtɹæns.fɔɹˈmeɪ.ʃən/, disappointment /ˌdɪsəˈpɔɪntmənt/, intimacy /ˈɪn.tɪ.mə.si/, longevity /lɒnˈd͡ʒɛv.ɪ.ti/
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 mindset, heroic, belief.
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.