Shadowing Practice: The Mindset that Changed My Life - Learn English Speaking with Video
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118 sentences
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If your life were a movie, what would the audience be screaming at the screen for you to do?
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It is summer 29th, 2025, and I'm currently on the border of Italy and France snowboarding by myself.
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It is day two in Thailand.
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Going to El Salvador, guys.
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This year, I didn't set a single New Year's resolution.
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I'm living by one mindset instead, and it's changing everything.
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I want to do everything, so I do nothing.
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The beginning of 2025 felt like a limbo.
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I'd just moved to New York City, I'd just graduated college, life was supposed to just be starting, but I felt stuck.
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I'd scroll on Instagram, people traveling, falling in love, living boldly, and I'd just be sitting on my couch, scrolling.
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It felt like there was an immovable wall between my life and the life that I wanted.
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Every possibility felt loud, every choice felt heavy, every path I didn't take felt like a loss.
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So I stayed still.
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I think the biggest thing I've always wanted to do was to travel, but I was so scared to do it alone.
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I told myself I would wait until I had more friends to do it, or until I made more money, or until I was just older and actually a grown-up.
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In the Unabridged Journal of Sylvia Plath, Plath writes, I want to live and feel all the shades, tones, and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life,
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and I am horribly limited.
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This line perfectly describes your 20s.
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Somehow in a world overflowing with possibility, more people than ever feel stuck.
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So every January, we try to fix that feeling with a list.
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I am going to be happy this year.
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I am going to make myself happy.
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Lose the weight, make the money, get disciplined, be happier.
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I've rich in those lists, a lot of them, every single year.
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And somehow they always fall apart i feel like for
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so long i made my new year's resolutions these like very
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outcome based goals i want a six pack i want to
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make this much money i want 500 000 followers it was
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all about what i wanted my life to turn out
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but not how i wanted to do it it was always outcome based
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but not process based
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and i feel like the outcome based goals like every time i would either not hit hit the goal
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and feel so shit about myself.
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I would hit the goal and be like, now what?
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Because there's a problem with New Year's resolutions.
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They don't change how you see yourself.
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They don't change how you move through everyday life.
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A resolution assumes that if you want something badly enough, then you'll just become the type of person that can sustain it.
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But wanting is not the same thing as knowing how to act.
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Most resolutions fail because they rely on motivation and motivation is fragile.
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It spikes in January and disappears the moment life becomes inconvenient.
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They also collapse under perfectionism.
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You miss one workout, one good meal, one day of journaling, and suddenly it just feels useless anymore, so you just abandon it completely.
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So this year, I didn't make resolutions in the traditional sense.
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I made a mindset shift.
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I saw this tweet online.
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There must be an opposite of suicide, where someone suddenly and radically decides to start living and rescues their own life from meaninglessness.
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I realized that I can just do things.
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I traveled across three countries in six days.
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I want to introduce this concept of having high agency.
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Agency is a capacity to act.
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High agency is a belief that your life is something you actively shape, not something you wait to happen to you.
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Here's a thought experiment.
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You wake up in a third world jail cell.
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You're allowed one phone call.
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Who do you call?
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This person isn't necessarily the smartest or the richest or the most powerful.
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They're the person who would just figure it out.
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I'm standing on the border of Italy and France.
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This is France.
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This is Italy.
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They believe there's always a move to make.
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That's high agency.
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People with high agency believe in this concept.
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The world doesn't happen to you.
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You happen to the world.
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They don't view the future as a static entity.
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They view it something to be shaped by human action.
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It's January 1st, 2026.
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Last night, I impulsively decided to rebook my flight and fly to Thailand today.
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High agency people aren't fearless, aren't lucky, aren't the smartest.
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They're not special.
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They just move.
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Even when things are unclear, even when they're scared, even when the outcome isn't guaranteed.
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Once I understood that, my days changed.
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Instead of asking, what's the right decision?
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I started asking, what's a decision?
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Because action creates information, stillness does not.
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So leave the apartment, book the trip, send the message start the thing i made it to milan i recently watched at poet society
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and it reminded me of carpe diem seize the day in
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2026 i want to seize every single day live every single
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day to the max i want to tell you about something
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else that's recently impacted my thinking there's something called the deferred life hypothesis it's just believed
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that your real life starts later after the degree after the
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move after you lose the weight after you feel more confident after You treat your current life like a waiting room, a prelude, a rehearsal.
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You tell yourself that you're being practical, responsible, even patient.
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But the truth is you're just postponing your real life.
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Because later never really shows up.
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It is day two in Thailand and we just got our food.
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The goalposts move.
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There's always another milestone, another reason to wait.
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And one day you realize that you spent years preparing for a life you never actually started living.
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I feel like for so long I felt like a victim of my circumstance.
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I was lonely because I just didn't have that many friends.
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I felt unfulfilled about my job because that's just what life is and I should just deal with that.
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But I think having high agency is realizing just how much control that you have over your mind, your mindset, and your own happiness.
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I think having that mindset of the fact that you can literally just do anything
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is really empowering and really inspires me to just move every single day
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and Not just sit on my phone and scroll and feel stuck
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because the world is out there Even
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if you're stuck at a job You don't like even
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if you're in a bad relationship even if you still can't move out your hometown
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There's still so many ways to improve your life and to just do things
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There is a distinct difference between living and existing
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and I feel like after I graduated college I was just on autopilot for an entire year
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and every single day I would just wake up feeling
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so bad for myself and I just felt like something was missing But nothing was missing.
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The only thing missing was my mindset, was gratitude.
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The only difference between the people that I saw on Instagram and myself was just that they did things.
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So stop waiting for life to start.
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Treat every day like it already has because it has.
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Carpe diem.
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Seize the day.
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I feel like it's so easy to brush off these sayings.
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It's just cliche Pinterest quotes but I think when you really internalize it, you realize just how much power you have over your everyday, over your happiness, over your life.
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Your life is truly what you make of it and how you want to shape it.
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It's not the pursuit of happiness, but more the happiness of pursuit.
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So are you waiting for your life or are you living it?
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “The Mindset that Changed My Life”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: felt, agency, resolution, mindset. This video has 118 sentences and 1324 words to shadow. The speech runs for 6:28. The speaker talks fast, about 205 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 82% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| mindset noun | /ˈmaɪn(d)ˌsɛt/ | A way of thinking; an attitude or opinion, especially a habitual one. |
| seize verb | /ˈsiːz/ | To deliberately take hold of; to grab or capture. |
| scroll noun | /skɹoʊl/ | A roll of paper or parchment; a writing formed into a roll. |
| scare verb | /skɛɚ/ | To frighten, terrify, startle, especially in a minor way. |
| pursuit noun | /pɝˈsut/ | The act of pursuing. |
| autopilot noun | /ˈɔtoʊˌpaɪlət/ | A mechanical, electrical, or hydraulic system used to guide a vehicle without assistance from a human being. |
| boldly adverb | /ˈboʊldli/ | In a bold manner; with confidence. |
| cliché noun | /kliˈʃeɪ/ | Something, most often a phrase or expression, that is overused or used outside its original context, so that its original impact and meaning are lost. A trite… |
| goalposts noun | a 7-10 split | |
| horribly adverb | /ˈhɔɹəbli/ | In a horrible way; very badly. |
| immovable adjective | /ɪˈmuːvəb(ə)l/ | Incapable of being physically moved: fixed. |
| impulsively adverb | /ɪmˈpʌlsɪvli/ | In an impulsive manner; with force; by impulse. |
| inconvenient adjective | /ˌɪn.kənˈviːni.ənt/ | not convenient |
| internalize verb | /ɪnˈtɝnəlaɪz/ | To make something internal; to incorporate it in oneself. |
| meaninglessness noun | /ˈminɪŋlɪsnɪs/ | The state of lacking meaning; the quality of being meaningless. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| have over verb | To host (a visiting guest) at one's house. | |
| brush off verb | To disregard (something), to dismiss or ignore (someone), as unimportant. | |
| fall apart verb | To disintegrate, to break into pieces. | |
| grow up verb | To mature and become an adult. | |
| move out verb | To leave one's present location; to leave somewhere for another place. | |
| show up verb | To appear, arrive, or attend, especially suddenly or erratically. | |
| turn out verb | To end up; to result. | |
| wake up verb | /ˌweɪk ˈʌp/ | To stop sleeping; to awake. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- I would hit the goal and be like, now what?
- They don't change how you see yourself.
- They don't change how you move through everyday life.
- You're allowed one phone call.
- I started asking, what's a decision?
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 | be shaped · isn't guaranteed |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | person that can · person who would |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 33 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, didn't, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: cliché /kliˈʃeɪ/, perfectionism /pɚˈfɛk.ʃə.nɪ.zm̩/, variation /ˌvɛəɹiˈeɪʃn̩/, shade /ʃeɪd/
- Long words — get the stress right: autopilot /ˈɔtoʊˌpaɪlət/, immovable /ɪˈmuːvəb(ə)l/, impulsively /ɪmˈpʌlsɪvli/, inconvenient /ˌɪn.kənˈviːni.ənt/, internalize /ɪnˈtɝnəlaɪz/
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, seize, scroll.
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.