Shadowing Practice: The Art of Emotional Control - Learn English Speaking with Video
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The biggest research studies in the world have shown we can change three things more significantly than most people believe.
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Many people, they base their belief on what's possible to change in their life based on their family's story, as if their family's story was the future.
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Your change should be strategic.
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We're trying to shift you into the character of who you are and who you are meant to be.
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That takes openness to learning new ways of living and being.
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And When you know you can purposely change, life is yours.
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You're not scared of context anymore.
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I'd like to share with you what we know that you can shift that might surprise some of you, especially for some of you who had families who didn't change.
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Because many people, they base their belief on what's possible to change in their life based on their family's story,
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as if their family's story was the future. But that's not true.
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That's not true at all.
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The biggest research studies in the world have shown we can change three things more significantly than most people believe.
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Number one, this one shocks people all the time.
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Personality.
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We have this belief that we have these fixed personalities in life,
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and that our enduring thoughts,
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feelings, and behaviors tend to stay in a norm for who we are throughout much of our adult lives, right?
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Throughout much of our adult lives.
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And we're all taught to believe that, especially those of us who studied basic psychology.
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It's like, oh, people have enduring personality traits.
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A trait is your thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and reactions, normative over a period of time.
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That's what personality is.
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Think about it.
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It's kind of how you think,
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feel, and act over a period of time that's regulated and can be measured against current circumstances or common psychological measures.
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That might sound like a lot of garbly gook, but stick with me so far.
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Even this last month, the European Journal of Psychology found that there's significant changes in our personality,
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not just by choice, but just based on common events across population.
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This means people tend to change their personality, we're going to come back to that.
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People change their personality based on very simple things.
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Personality shifts significantly at graduation.
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Shifts significantly at first job.
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Shifts significantly at marriage.
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And some of you have watched at divorce too.
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So these are significant correlations in change and personality in people's lives, whether they want it or not.
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It just happens.
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When kids graduate college, they shift.
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When they graduate high school, they shift.
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When you get your first job, you shift.
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When you enter a new peer group, you shift.
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That first key relationship in your life, it shifts you.
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and we don't think that's true.
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It's like these are major shifts, like very high correlative studies.
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So, what does personality mean, and how do they do this?
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You all familiar with the ocean framework?
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Raise your hand if you know what I'm talking about.
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Oh, very few.
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Okay.
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Personality, stick with me.
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Let me give you a framework, and I'll come back.
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When they say personality, psychology, psychologists.
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They're often talking about, you heard the big five?
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You ever heard the big five psychological traits?
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The big five means this.
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First, they measure openness.
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This room, I don't need to preach on openness to you.
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You're here because you have a high trait of openness.
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You are curious.
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You're open to new ideas.
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You like to experiment and learn, Like a high level of openness to new life experience and new learning in your life.
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You all get that.
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But who knows somebody who ain't like that?
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Yeah.
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Well, guess what?
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This thing, when people, imagine this.
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When you get married, openness tends to go down.
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Yeah, because you're like, oh, I'm good.
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She's my person.
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I don't have to keep learning and develop, I already won the lottery with her.
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She likes me.
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And then you get divorced and you see this person, they're out doing wild new things.
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Who's seen this?
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They get divorced and all of a sudden they're a different human being.
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Their openness explodes.
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So go ahead and tell me personality change isn't possible.
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It happens all the time.
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It's just the cynics in the room who tried to change their life
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and failed at it now believe that people can't change.
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If you ever hear people can't change, you are hearing a cynic.
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You're hearing somebody who failed and has never worked with people.
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Because in my life, I get to see amazing human beings change.
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Who saw someone in this room change, ultra members?
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It's like, come on.
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those of who actually work with people not study papers work with humans we get to see the hope
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and the inspiration and the significant openness and
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that happens for people in good times
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and bad times sometimes people's openness increases after tragedy true tragedy they open to more faith they open to new beliefs.
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They open to new networks of people in their grief.
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Openness is a very high correlation to lots of levels of what we'll call positive outcomes later.
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But openness just happens for some people.
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Just naturally happens.
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People wouldn't go to school.
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You thought you knew your kid, then they went to college and started trying all these new drugs.
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You didn't know, oh, personality radically changes in new peer groups.
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Oh, you thought they had to fix personality.
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Personality shifts more than most people think, and often not by strategy, just by accident.
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our job in growth day is to make it strategic your
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change should be strategic we're trying to shift you into the character of who you are
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and who you are meant to be
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that takes openness to learning new ways of living and being
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and thinking and i get excited about that kind of thing
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that you can purposely change turn the person left right shake them good say you can purposely change
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I don't think y 'all got excited enough about that.
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You can purposefully change.
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Try it one more time.
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Try it again.
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Try it again.
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Grab them.
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Shake them.
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You can purposefully change.
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Try it again.
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Yeah.
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Everyone say it with me.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Hey, in the back, say yeah.
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you can purposely, you can what?
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When you know you can purposely change, life is yours.
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You're not scared of context anymore because you go, all right, this has changed.
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I'm open to that being a reality.
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Let me learn here again.
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Let me experiment.
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Let me try.
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Let me shift.
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Openness is a trait and that you can shift it is incredible.
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The entire growth mindset rests on the trait of openness.
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Because if I'm closed, I have a fixed mindset.
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So you're enduring thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
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It's got to shift.
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It's got to shift into being open again.
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And our world got so cynical and so shut down.
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I mean, people are snarky little brats on the internet now.
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You all agree?
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I'm like, don't you have anything to do? but be a snarky brat?
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Because see, when people don't feel power, their way of feeling power is insulting others.
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When you don't feel power, the way you get it is to insult somebody.
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Tear down versus build up.
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It's like Booker T.
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Washington taught us all.
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There's two ways to exert power.
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One is pushing down, the other is pulling up.
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And when you become open to the idea that you can pull people up and you can pull yourself up purposefully, that's the essence of personal development.
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That's why I love this work so much.
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So they found, wow, people make significant changes in their personality, graduation, first job, marriage, divorce,
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peer groups, etc. Other areas that they change, and this is big.
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Gosh, I hope I spelled this right.
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Conscientiousness, that is such a big word for a Montanan. Does it look right?
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Conscientiousness, con -science -shus -ness, okay.
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It's shusness, I, I think you're all fooling with me.
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Is that an O?
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The word is conscientiousness.
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And you'll know it when you see it.
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Okay.
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This is huge.
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People's conscientiousness goes up in their lives, often when they get promoted to another level in a job.
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Because now, for those who don't know conscientiousness, it means discipline.
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It means attention to detail and follow through.
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It means dutiful action.
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It means I pay attention, I do the thing, I follow through on the thing. For example, folks who come out of surgery
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and are more conscientious about taking the pills the doctor gave them live on average four times longer
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if they have a conscientious trait.
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If they don't have a conscientious trait, they don't take the pills, they tend to die.
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True.
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Your ability to teach yourself to pay attention to detail, do the thing consistently with discipline,
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follow through on it, and to organize, that is conscientiousness.
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So for those who don't organize, don't have discipline, and don't have follow through, the good news at growth days, you're going to die early.
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Hey, where are those choir guys?
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the number one trait
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if you're interested in personality research the number one trait related
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to longevity for all the longevity dorks in the world now
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conscientiousness is the number one positive personality trait related to longevity
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to your actual life span it's key your health degrades
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when you don't pay attention to it paying attention to important things is conscientiousness.
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Paying attention to important things, doing the thing, having discipline and organization, and following through.
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This was a trait I did not have.
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But see, traits aren't things that are unchangeable.
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When I recognized, I was like, wow, if I don't get organized in my life,
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I'm going to be trapped by the winds of randomness at all times.
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If I don't get organized in my life, I'm not going to genuinely be able to impact people.
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If I don't get organized in my life, I'm not going to be able to write a chapter in a book because I can't even organize my thoughts. And this was me.
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I was not a high conscientious person at all.
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I was a hot mess, fly by the seat of my pants, have fun kind of guy for a long time in my life until my car accident.
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And the car accident made me want to live the day.
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And you don't live the day unless you organize it.
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You're never really going to feel the day unless you organize some times to rest or to do things you enjoy, to build in time for life,
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your hobbies, your passions, your joys.
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That's the stuff.
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That's the stuff.
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And so I had to learn to become conscientious, including in business.
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The more people you hire, the more organized you're going to start thinking.
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And people go, no, no, just hire that person.
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I'm like, oh, yeah, hire that person, your integrator, your organizer.
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But you still have to manage them.
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So you've got to teach yourself these.
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I share this again because you can change these.
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And these have extreme positive outcomes comes.
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The number one most tied to wealth is this one and this one.
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We're going to come to the two.
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Is this too geeky or you guys like this stuff?
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Okay.
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The next trait they measure is called extroversion.
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To be extroverted means you enjoy both adventure seeking and social seeking.
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You like new experiences to be out and about.
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to do things in the world that are new, but also have a high favorability to social.
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You like people.
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You want to be around people.
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You're willing to come here.
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I know we got thousands watching on the internet right now, but the people in this room, the energy in this room.
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Now I know only half the audience clapped because the other audience is like, I'm not an extrovert.
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I'm an introvert.
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I'm just high on openness and learning.
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That's why I'm here.
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No, no, the fact that you left your house says that's a part of you that is extroverted.
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And this is a common mistake in life.
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We believe that people are either introverted or extroverted.
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The thing about personality traits, they're on scales.
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Think about like a spectrum, right?
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As an example, everyone thinks, because what I do all day, every week, so many weeks of my life, I'm out here with you guys.
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Everyone thinks I must be peak alpha extroverted.
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I'm right down the line.
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I take the test every year.
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I'm right down the line in four different extroverted psychological profiles.
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I'm right down the line between introverted and extroverted.
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Because I might do this, but then I need my recovery time.
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I might do this, but then I've written seven, eight books.
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I need that time alone, right?
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And I'm one of those people, like if I don't get the time alone,
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I turn a little like.. whatever word that face is.
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You're like, you know, anyone else like that?
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You're just kind of like, you love your spouse, you like her, you even want to have sex with her, but sometimes you're like.. your hands are shaking a little bit.
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You're just like, I need time in dark, away from humans.
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You ever have that?
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Okay.
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I'm sensing from the laughter in the room.
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Some people know what I'm talking about.
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The ability to be social as a skill and to be conscientious.
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These two things are very much tied to your income.
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very much tied to your income to want to be with people serve people
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and to be organized disciplined deliberate attentive to detail these two are phenomenal
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and both of them are important this one was not authentic
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for me for a long time i was way more introverted
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especially in my 20s way more introverted than people thought i could fake it who can fake it Like, you could go out, you can clap,
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but sometimes you're like, ah,
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you're making it happen versus bringing the joy,
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versus connecting to the peace and the fulfillment with seeing other people's souls and delighting in people.
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I had to learn to delight in people.
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And most people never learned to delight in people because they were taught not to trust people.
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Often, your trait of extroversion and introversion was based on trust experiences.
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Your dad stole your trust.
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Your uncle stole your trust.
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Somebody in school stole your trust.
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You trusted people less, and it created a preference, not a hard -coded trait, not even a heritable trait,
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a preference of not engaging the world.
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It wasn't a psychological purposeful choice, it was self -safety.
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And I think that where I grew up, there was a lot of violence, and so I had to learn to trust people before I could actually serve them.
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Who knows what I mean?
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I had to like, oh, people are cool.
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I like people.
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People are, for the most part, you know that they're trustworthy, honorable, caring, trying their best.
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Otherwise, we would have blown up ourselves a long time ago, you know?
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And if we hadn't done it, AI is going to do it for us.
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So you might as well start to take delight in people
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because you're going to start interacting with a lot more machines in your lifetime.
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It's kind of nice to meet real humans who have heart
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and soul and when you start seeing people as humans with heart and soul, you shift into being curious about them.
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And it turns out being curious with people, openness, the more we can increase this, the more this naturally increases.
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Okay, I'm being a little dorky on this.
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I'll go a little faster. Is this all right?
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You're doing it cool?
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I just think it's so cool that people, they measure this all the time.
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You can see such radical shifts in these things.
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And here's the thing.
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I will tell you this.
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You will never think a change in someone's life is radical.
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as much as they will?
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You know what I mean?
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You're like, someone starts drinking a morning shake, and you're like, whatever, but she's Instagramming it every day for a year.
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Right?
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Our changes are significant to us.
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To hell with what other people think of them.
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Like, your change is significant to you.
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You don't have to impress nobody with your change.
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You feel it when you make it, when you eat healthier, it feels like lifetimes different.
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And so your changes matter.
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Your changes and your shifts, and sometimes we don't really see that.
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You know, sometimes we don't really see that.
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And that's why this one, I think, is a good point.
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Agreeableness.
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agreeableness.
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This is another part of the big five.
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People start laughing as soon as I say agreeable because we think, I'm not agreeable with people.
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Agreeable tends to mean that you aren't just like agreeable
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when someone says something to you like you're a yes man or yes woman.
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That's not what it means.
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Agreeable means you take care in relationships.
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to hear and be heard.
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Agreeableness doesn't mean you agree with their position.
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It means you get along with people because you honor that they have a position.
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Like, I don't feel, even if you're different than me, I don't feel in conflict with you because you don't bring an edge to my beliefs, right?
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So it's not, see, most people think agreeableness is about compliance.
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She agreed with me, so she's good.
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That's not what they're measuring.
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They're measuring, do you get along with people because you have communication understanding and skill?
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That means, I like to hang out with her.
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Like, she's agreeable to this relationship.
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She's agreeable to how we want to live.
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It doesn't mean she's permissive or she condones or she's compliant.
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People mistake this one all the time.
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It doesn't mean he does everything you say, so he's agreeable.
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It means they're open to allowance in the relationship of differences.
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They deal with conflict better.
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People who are agreeable deal with conflict better even if they don't always get the same number of positive outcomes,
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meaning they value the process of communication and relationship.
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You ever been in a fight with somebody and they don't follow any process in a fight?
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They won't let you have your turn.
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You ever heard of somebody?
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They will not let you have your turn.
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Who's ever been with that type of person?
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That person would have a low level of agreeableness in psychology.
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So you can tell them that next time you talk to them, you're like, Brendan told me you have low agreeableness.
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they're bad.
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People who have low agreeableness, they don't take turns.
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They don't listen.
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They don't take care to hear the other side.
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Agreeableness, of course, is huge in negotiation.
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It's huge in business deals.
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The greatest negotiators in the world are very agreeable people.
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When you study negotiation books and sales books, you're like, oh, they're trying to get agreement throughout the sales process.
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They're not trying to create enemies or create false tribes or us versus them.
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They're trying to create a sense of belonging.
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And that's a huge character trait, but also a leadership trait, creating that sense of belonging purpose together.
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What's the word?
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What's the word?
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Together.
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Together.
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They create a sense of togetherness in relationships.
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Why does it matter?
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Because higher levels of agreeableness in marriages predict divorce.
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The more agreeableness as traits that people have, the more they tend to stay married.
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And so these have huge life outcomes.
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Okay.
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Last one, and I'll explain it too, is called neuroticism.
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Everyone's favorite.
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Who thinks you have a neurotic spouse?
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She just looked at the person next to her, like...
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She wanted to raise her hand, but she realized he was right there.
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I saw that.
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Y 'all don't think I see this stuff from up here.
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It is pretty dark out there, I have to admit, but sometimes I see those emotions and it makes me laugh.
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I'm sorry.
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Neuroticism, here's a better phrase for those, especially my international fans right here.
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Neuroticism, think about it as emotional stability.
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Emotional stability.
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Neuroticism is not bad, just like disagreeableness is not bad, just like not being conscientious is not bad.
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Remember, everything's on a spectrum or a scale, right?
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Everybody here has a level of neuroticism about something.
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Neuroticism is more about emotional control,
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emotional self -regulation, a stability in how you handle things, a centeredness.
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Why do I share that?
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Everything you've learned about in mindfulness or resilience training is trying to improve this score.
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Like, we want you to have low levels of neuroticism, which means not too much emotional instability.
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Right?
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We want you to be emotionally stable, in charge of your own thoughts, feelings, emotions.
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You own your emotions.
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That's what this is measured.
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Own and take responsibility for their emotions.
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When they do, that's good.
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When they don't, that's high neuroticism.
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When they're just like, they won't take control of their emotions.
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They won't be responsible for their actions.
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They're very unstable all the time.
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It's like dealing like the peak of that top would be like schizophrenia, even though that's a very different thing than what we're talking about today.
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It's like this person's just all over the place all the time.
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Highly emotional reaction.
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Why did the last couple of years, last four years, why did stoicism become so huge worldwide, like a resurgence in stoicism?
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Because everybody was watching all these cynical little brats on the internet and said,
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hey, we need to learn to control our emotions a little bit better in times of change.
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The way that you control yourself is a character trait.
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And we need to understand that.
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And so even in schools, rolling out more emotional regulation has been life -changing.
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You can see students who get training on mindfulness, who get training on self -regulation, how to control their own emotions and thoughts.
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They have completely different outcomes in school, in sports, and in their first job's earnings.
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than those who's never had any training.
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Like, that means you can shift this significantly.
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And for those who feel like you are like, I always feel so crazy.
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I'm like, this is why you do personal development work.
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You train your mind.
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Who's here to train your mind?
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That's what we're here to do.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “The Art of Emotional Control”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: trait, shift, personality, openness. This video has 389 sentences and 3785 words to shadow. The speech runs for 27:47. The speaker talks at a steady 136 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 86% 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
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| trait noun | /tɹeɪt/ | An identifying characteristic, habit or trend. |
| openness noun | Accommodating attitude or opinion, as in receptivity to new ideas, behaviors, cultures, peoples, environments, experiences, etc., different from the familiar… | |
| agreeable adjective | /əˈɡɹiəbəl/ | Able to agree; possible to be agreed. |
| agreeableness noun | The quality of being agreeable or pleasing; that quality which gives satisfaction or moderate pleasure to the mind or senses. | |
| organize verb | /ˈɔɹɡənaɪz/ | To arrange in working order. |
| conscientiousness noun | The state or characteristic of being conscientious. | |
| neuroticism noun | The quality or state of being neurotic | |
| conscientious adjective | /ˌkɑn.ʃiˈɛn.ʃəs/ | Thorough, careful, or vigilant in one’s task performance; painstaking. |
| extroverted adjective | /ˈɛkstɹəˌvəɹtɪd/ | Turned or thrust outwards, especially |
| 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. |
| introverted adjective | /ˈɪn.tɹəˌvɜːɹ.təd/ | Thinking about internal or spiritual matters. |
| purposely adverb | /ˈpɝpəsli/ | On purpose; intentionally. |
| delight noun | /dəˈlaɪt/ | Joy; pleasure. |
| purposefully adverb | /ˈpɝ.pəs.fə.li/ | In a purposeful (“resolute, determined”) manner: resolutely, determinedly. |
| longevity noun | /lɒnˈd͡ʒɛv.ɪ.ti/ | The quality of being long-lasting, especially of life. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| follow through verb | To execute or complete a commitment. | |
| blow up verb | To explode or be destroyed by explosion. | |
| build up verb | To erect; to construct. | |
| come back verb | To return to a place. | |
| go ahead verb | /ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/ | To proceed with; to begin. |
| go down verb | To descend; to move from a higher place to a lower one. | |
| go out verb | To leave, especially a building. | |
| grow up verb | To mature and become an adult. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- You all familiar with the ocean framework?
- They're often talking about, you heard the big five?
- I'm like, don't you have anything to do?
- You're like, you know, anyone else like that?
- Who's here to train your mind?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are meant · can be measured · be trapped |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have shown · have watched · has never worked |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | somebody who ain · somebody who failed · those who don |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 131 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, you're, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: trustworthy /ˈtɹʌst.wɜː.ði/, authentic /ɔˈθɛn.tɪk/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: conscientious /ˌkɑn.ʃiˈɛn.ʃəs/, emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, negotiation /nɪˌɡəʊ.ʃiˈeɪ.ʃən/, correlation /ˌkɔɹ.əˈleɪ.ʃən/, graduation /ˌɡɹæd͡ʒuˈeɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: conscientious /ˌkɑn.ʃiˈɛn.ʃəs/, extroverted /ˈɛkstɹəˌvəɹtɪd/, introverted /ˈɪn.tɹəˌvɜːɹ.təd/, purposefully /ˈpɝ.pəs.fə.li/, 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.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like trait, openness, agreeable.
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.