Shadowing Practice: The Only 15 Minutes You Need To Master Self-Control | Robert Greene Motivation - Learn English Speaking with Video

So your brain needs pressure.

It needs constant pressure.

And stress and pressure is not a bad thing.

We have this thing where we feel like stress is bad.

It's bad for you.

Bad.

You know, you need to relax, man.

You need to chill.

Stress will kill you.

No, being bored will kill you.

Not having anything to do will kill you.

It's much more dangerous than stress.

Yes, you can work too hard.

You can work where there's no soul involved.

I work like a fiend because I'm writing a book and it's a very hard process for me.

And I'm working far too much, but man, I love it.

It's fantastic.

And it could kill me.

The stress could kill me.

It gave me a stroke.

But I'd rather die under the stress than be bored and have nothing to do.

Never complain, never explain.

And what it means is don't complain about life.

Don't explain what you're doing or why you're doing it.

Just do it.

By whining and complaining, all you're doing is making people think bad things about you.

You're looking weak.

Stop whining and stop explaining yourself.

And just do things in the world.

And let your actions speak for themselves.

So that level of focus has to have a lot of energy behind it

because you're so in love with what you're doing that when you deviate from it, this little radar inside of your brain goes,

you're off, you're off, you got to get back to it, right?

And it's painful, but when you do get back to it and when things do click, it's incredibly pleasurable.

So the focus for young people that seems so painful, God damn it, everyone else is having so much fun and I'm having to learn this,

just keep telling yourself that you're doing something that your brain is going to reward you with several years down the line.

So that friend of yours that seems to be having so much fun, in three years, they're going to be sliding down the ladder working at some crap job,

whereas you're going to be rising up.

So just keep your mind on the larger issue there and know that

working with what your brain works well with will pay incredible rewards down the line.

Above all else, focus on acquiring knowledge and skills.

Knowledge and skills are like gold, a currency you will transform into something more valuable than you can imagine.

It's similar to one of your tweets, which is, Eventually the time

that was not spent on learning skills will catch up to you and the fall will be painful.

Well, life can be kind of difficult.

You don't really know sometimes where you're headed.

Nobody kind of gives you any kind of guidance in this world, right?

And they don't tell you when you graduate college, go ahead, go Robert, you go study this.

This is what your brain is suited for, etc. You have to find your own path.

And so for me personally, I spent years in the wilderness.

I know I want to be a writer, but I can't figure out what the hell I'm going to write.

So I leave college and I try journalism because I have to make a living.

I have to support myself.

And as somebody who studied ancient Greek and Latin in college, I think in terms of thousands of years and not in three days or a week,

you know, I want something that I write to be read in 3020 for, you know.

So I wander around Europe trying to write a novel with my backpack.

I live in London, I live in Paris, I lived in Ireland, I lived in Greece, you name it, I taught English in Spain.

I had no discipline, I couldn't do it, it didn't work, and I started to get depressed.

I had spent 18 years or so acquiring high levels of skill in writing.

I learned in journalism how to write under a deadline, under pressure, how to make it dramatic, how to make the opening sentence exciting enough to make you read off further.

Trying to write novels taught me about creating stories, which is a huge part of my writing.

Working in Hollywood, I learned how to research, which is a huge element, and then the theatrical element, making things dramatic, also story.

All of that time, slowly by slowly, brick by brick, I had developed real level skill.

So when it came time to write the 48 Laws of Power, I could do it.

I had learned all this discipline.

I had learned how to write under a deadline.

I learned how to make things entertaining.

The whole bag.

And so the world opened up for me.

Prior to that time, I was miserable.

I didn't know why, but I was acquiring skills, not even aware of it.

And so, the reason I write that is, when you develop that skill, when you're serious about it,

because I was very serious about writing, you change your brain.

You rewire your brain.

And this is a remarkable power of the human brain that people don't realize.

This one writer, his name is Schwartz I believe, he's a UCLA neuroscientist.

He wanted to help people who had OCD and usually it's drugs and it's talking therapy.

He wanted to find out something more effective.

So he did brain scans and through the strategies that he gave them to do, the brain scans show that they changed the brain.

His point was, through thinking, through developing skills, you literally change matter, you change your brain.

So something non-material like thoughts can literally change material things like the wiring of your brain.

You learn skills, you're changing your brain, you're changing the matter of your brain.

Things are connecting that weren't connected before.

And slowly, if you do it if you're serious enough, a point will be reached like it was reached in my life where either you will start a business

or someone will ask you to do something like write a book

or make a film and the world will open up for you

and you'll be able to do it because you have

that you've laid the ground you've laid the soil everything is there it's rich

and now something great amazing will sprout up out of it.

But for those that don't they just don't have

that belief can you lie to yourself can you tell yourself I am strong and I am powerful?

Well, everybody had some good qualities, right?

Everybody, I think almost everybody has something that they can go back to in the past and go, I was actually very good at that, that was actually a good moment,

I actually was scored in that particular moment.

And you can think about that.

I mean, actors do that all the time in movies, when they want to express an emotion, They go back into their past,

like they have to express sadness.

They go back and they think about their father or mother who died and they call that emotion up.

You can call that emotion up of when you did something actually really great.

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You might have only been in high school when you were on the sports team and you threw the touchdown or something.

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Okay, think about that and it'll come back to you.

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Everybody has something that they can be confident about, I hope.

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judge people based on their intelligence, on their charm, on whether they're good or bad, etc. Judge them on their character,

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whether they have a weak or a strong character.

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A weak character is somebody who cannot take criticism.

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That is probably the number one characteristic.

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The worst trait I think in people, and a definite trait of negativity, is somebody who can't take any kind of criticism.

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They're so defensive.

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So that means they can get away with anything.

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They can say anything they want, and there's just like a wall, a shell around them.

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A strong character is a person who can take criticism, who can work with other people, right?

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Who can deal with stressful situations, who can handle responsibility, and if something goes wrong, they take...

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I'm to blame for it.

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They don't look at other people.

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There's somebody you can rely on.

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You lean on them, and there's something there to lean on.

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You can rely on them in situations.

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So the ability in a work situation, in a relationship, to take criticism and be able to use it constructively

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is an incredibly useful and powerful trait to me that reveals strong character.

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How people handle stress is a really good sign of their character.

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In a work situation, people are good at faking it and pretending that they're very strong.

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But when it gets really stressful and there's a lot of pressure on it, the mask falls off and they reveal that they can't handle it.

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They're too weak.

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They're reacting to everything.

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They can't get out of the moment.

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They're so impatient, you know, and fragile.

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And so the ability to handle stress shows that somebody has something strong inside of them, right?

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How they handle power.

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When people are kind of climbing up the ladder in a group or in a job, they generally try and pretend like they're with the group.

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But once they have power, that all falls off, and they can become abusive, and they feel like they can get away with anything that they couldn't get away with before.

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They treat people below them miserably, etc. So when people have power, how do they handle it?

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Are they responsible?

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Do they suddenly become somebody different?

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or do they maintain the character that they had beforehand?

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What kind of partners do they choose?

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Do they choose a spouse, a husband, a girlfriend, etc.? Somebody that they can push around, somebody that's inferior to them so that they can feel better about themselves?

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How do they look when they're playing like a game

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or they're in outdoor activities or something that has nothing to do with work?

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Are they so competitive they have to win at everything, even when it's like outside of that kind of environment, you know?

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These are kind of traits that help me sort of judge a person's character.

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It's better to admit it and it's better to be able to play the game when you have to.

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Like always say less than necessary.

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It's going to save you a lot of pain.

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You don't have to go around all your life practicing these things.

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I don't think you want to.

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In looking at powerful people, the person who talks less always gives off a greater aura of power than the people that are yabbering all the time,

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all the time that are talking, that can't control their tongue.

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And the idea is, if you can't control your mouth, if you just keep talking and talking, it gives an aura to other people that you can't control anything else.

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You have no self-control.

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And that is a very unpowerful aura.

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And obviously, the more you talk, the more you are prone to say something kind of stupid and irrational that you're going to regret.

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And so powerful people know to command an audience, They sit there, they let other people talk and argue,

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and then occasionally they utter something that's maybe a little bit ambiguous.

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Whoa, that's very interesting.

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Robert said that.

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What does that mean?

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You look powerful.

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You give off an air of mystery.

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You give off an air of control.

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A lot of people have a hard time with it because they think, wow, should I just be able to say whatever I want and just talk?

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Well, no, you don't.

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Not in the social world, not in the work world.

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It's going to get you in trouble.

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Learn to control what you talk

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and learn that there are moments that saying less is actually much more powerful than just yammering on and on.

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What advice would you have for young men that are feeling a little lost in the modern world?

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Well, you have to be comfortable with who you are and with your masculinity.

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The word masculine has now got like this negative connotation around it, which is terrible, because you're a young man.

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It's not every young man.

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Some men don't feel this way, But a lot of young men, I remember myself, you've got this testosterone that's roaring through you,

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you're competitive, you're ambitious, you have goals, you have this energy, you want to assert yourself.

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But it's bad, it's bad, it's bad.

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You're not supposed to be like that, you know?

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And so, and the culture isn't about, there's no virtue in masculinity.

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Okay, there is such a thing as toxic masculinity, most definitely.

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There are virtues in being masculine and have to be redefined.

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And we have to have icons and role models for that.

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And so when I was growing up, you know, I watched like a lot of westerns.

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You know, it was the silent hero kind of thing, the Gary Cooper thing.

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But my idea of masculinity growing up was a man who was in control of himself, who wasn't mean, wasn't pushing people around,

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who is decent, who treated women well.

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So treating women well is a masculine virtue, is a good thing.

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It comes from a position of strength.

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You're not insecure about your masculinity.

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You don't have to prove that you're a man by demeaning women, by pushing them around.

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You can respect women, and respecting them is a sign of your strength, a sign of being secure in your masculinity.

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You don't need to put other people down to make yourself feel better.

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okay so we have to redefine these qualities

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but there are no icons like out out there you either

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have the Andrew Tate's out of there you have these wimpy men who are just

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so afraid of being masculine your aggression your assertiveness your testosterone

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it's a good thing it's how things get done it's what

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energizes you what puts you in the world it makes what makes you ambitious it makes you assert yourself

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and motivate yourself it has to be channeled it has to be disciplined

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but you have to see who you are and see the virtue

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and see the power in that and it's a cultural problem

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because men are very confused so now it's very difficult

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because you're being told that all these things

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that you feel naturally are negative they're only negative

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if you can't control them

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so self-control is a very masculine quality you're able to control

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yourself you're able to control your passions you're able to not talk too much

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if you don't need to talk too much

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but they're good they're just how you use them

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that can be bad i channeled it all of my aggression all of

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that testosterone i poured into my books i poured that edge that aggression

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that like damn you i don't really like you i don't

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like the world into the 48 laws of power into here's

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how these manipulative is how people manipulate these are how people can be bad

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and cruel and damn it i'm going to get all my aggression by exposing it

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and showing it and being as real and direct.

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I channel it into something as opposed to hurting other people kind of thing.

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So finding ways to channel your aggressive tendencies is a positive way of being a man.

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You have to find whatever that is.

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Sports is a great example, but there are other things as well.

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Thank you.

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: The Only 15 Minutes You Need To Master Self-Control | Robert Greene Motivation - Learn English Speaking with Video

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What is the Shadowing Technique?