Shadowing Practice: The Simple Habit for a Happier Social Life | Nicholas Epley | TED - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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There's a fundamental paradox right at the core of human life.
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On the one hand, decades of research has shown
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that we are highly social creatures who are made happier
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and healthier by reaching out and connecting with other people in the moments,
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the days, the weeks, the months and the years of our lives.
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And yet, on the other hand,
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just look around a little bit.
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It's not clear that all of us have gotten this memo.
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Every day, there are opportunities,
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big and small, to reach out and connect with other people that we choose not to take.
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We avoid talking to strangers.
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We lean back and type to each other rather than leaning in and talking to each other.
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Once talking, we stick to shallow talk,
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to small talk, rather than going deeper.
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We feel grateful but don't express it,
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want to reach out to offer support to someone in need but hold back.
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We'd like to be open and honest in our relationships but all too often keep our true selves to ourselves.
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If being socially connected is so darn good for us,
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then why do we so often seem to be so darn unsocial?
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This paradox hit me like a freight train one morning while I was on an actual train,
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commuting into my office at the University of Chicago where I work as a professor of behavioral science.
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That morning on the train began like every other I'd been on for years beforehand,
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all filing onto the train,
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everybody in a desperate search for their own little acreage of solitude right along the window.
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I think we'd have sat outside the train if that was possible.
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Heaven forbid you'd sit next to somebody and start to chit-chat.
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Of course, you creep, or worse yet,
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somebody would come and sit down next to you,
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surely some kind of weirdo.
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But then there we all were,
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highly social creatures, made happier and healthier by connecting with other people,
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now sitting hip-to-hip with another perfectly reasonable human being.
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And what did we do for the next 30 to 45 minutes with each other?
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We chose to ignore each other.
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You could have heard a pin drop that morning. That morning,
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a woman who was about 15 to 20 years older than I was at the time sat down next to me,
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dressed professionally for work, and wearing just this fabulous, killer, stylish red hat.
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I'm never going to forget this red hat.
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I put other people in experiments for a living,
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but this morning I decided to put myself in an experiment and pay close attention to what happened.
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Instead of keeping to myself and doom scrolling on my phone or checking my email,
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I'd try to have a conversation with her,
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try to help us get to know each other a little bit,
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turn this 30-minute dull ride into something a little more interesting,
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turn a stranger into a momentary acquaintance.
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The second, though, I had that thought about that experiment,
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my brain started screaming at me all the reasons why this was a really, really bad idea.
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Clearly, she doesn't want to talk to you,
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otherwise she'd already be talking to you.
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She's going to think you're some kind of creep.
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You probably don't even have anything in common with her,
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and you've got nothing to even start with, smarty pants.
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Nevertheless, I decided the experiment must continue,
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so I ignored that part of my brain.
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I turned to her, and I said, Hi, my name's Nick.
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I love your hat.
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I have one just like it.
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Yeah, huh?
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Now look, I know that's not going to make its way into the conversation starter hall of fame,
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but it didn't seem to matter.
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She turned to me, a big smile,
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her face all lit up,
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almost like she looked like a different person.
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And from there, the conversation just flowed really easily.
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Found things that we had in common.
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We talked about our families,
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our work, our hope for the future.
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30-minute train ride just went like that.
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I was done.
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I got up to leave,
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and she stopped me and she said,
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thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me this morning.
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I've forgotten a lot of details about how that conversation actually went,
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but I've never forgotten how that conversation made me feel.
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Not just good, but surprisingly good.
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The contrast between my beliefs about how that would go and how it actually went was pretty sizable.
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And there then also in that gap was a potential resolution to this paradox.
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Social connection, after all, isn't something that just happens to us.
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It's a choice we make.
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It's a choice we make at times to reach out and approach other people to engage with them,
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or to hold back and avoid them.
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It might in fact arguably be the choice we make,
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the most important choice we make,
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because how we make that choice over and over
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and over again in our lives so routinely determines so much about our happiness,
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our health, and our success in life.
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But highly social creatures like us might avoid reaching out
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and engaging with other people mistakenly if we underestimate just how positively our attempts to connect might turn out.
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That morning changed both my career and my character.
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In my career, my collaborators,
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my wonderful collaborators
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and I have now conducted well over 100 experiments with over 30,000 people of all ages
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and nationalities and found that my tendency to be overly pessimistic is not unique to me.
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It's something we see over and over again in varying shades
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and magnitudes across different contexts that vary a little bit across people,
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but that consistent signal is there.
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In one of our very first experiments,
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we went back to a train station on the line that I ride into work every day,
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and we recruited a group of commuters,
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and we asked them to predict how they would feel on the train
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that morning if they kept to themselves in solitude
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or if they turned to the person who sat next to them that morning and tried to have a conversation,
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tried to connect.
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The results here were crystal clear.
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People thought talking to a stranger was a really bad idea.
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They thought they would have a more pleasant experience that left them feeling happier if they kept to themselves in solitude
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than if they turned to the stranger to connect with them on the train.
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But when we recruited another sample of people
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and actually randomly assigned them in an experiment to either keep to themselves in solitude
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or to try to connect with a person sitting next to them rather than just imagine it to actually do it,
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we found exactly the opposite results.
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The people we had instructed randomly to keep to themselves that morning
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reported having a less pleasant and happy commute than those we asked to connect to the person sitting next to them.
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People's beliefs about social interaction here weren't just wrong, they were precisely backwards.
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But notice that if you believed that talking with a stranger would suck,
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you wouldn't try it, and then you'd never find out that you might be wrong about that.
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Pessimistic beliefs in that way are self-fulfilling.
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This little experiment was just the tip of a very large iceberg that came into view for us in many ensuing years.
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We've now seen this tendency to be overly pessimistic over and over and over again.
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We've now had, for instance,
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more than 4,500 people, not just to have conversations with a stranger,
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but to have deep conversations with a stranger,
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talking about things like, can you tell me what you're most grateful for in your life?
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Or can you tell me about one of the last times you cried in front of another person?
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So when I show people these questions in these experiments,
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I can feel just a sense of dread spreading over the room when I put these questions up on the board.
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Like people start eyeing the exits,
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wishing they hadn't come to this session today.
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But then when I actually put them into the experiments,
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the trouble that I have in the conversation,
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the trouble I have is getting them to come back.
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These conversations go much better than people expect that they will.
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This is also true when we have people who disagree about the most divisive political issues
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that divide us today talk about those political agreements.
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Even those political disagreements, those conversations about political disagreement,
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go better than people expect them to.
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We find in our research that we have tremendous power to create meaningful social connection every day of our lives,
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but if we underestimate how positively our efforts to reach out and connect with someone will go,
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we won't use that power that we have.
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We see this tendency for misplaced pessimism also showing up beyond conversation.
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When we ask people to think of a compliment they could give to their friend
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and then actually deliver that compliment to their friend,
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they leave their friend feeling more uplifted than the complimenters imagine they will.
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When we ask people to express their gratitude to someone they love,
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they leave their recipients feeling even better than the expressors predict that they will.
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Performing random acts of kindness,
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reaching out and asking for help,
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expressing support to someone in need,
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being open and honest in our relationships,
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all tend to be received on average more favorably,
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more positively by the people we're reaching out to than the people who are reaching out expected to.
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How much more time would you spend reaching out to lift somebody up
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if you knew just how much good in that moment you could actually do?
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No research I've ever been involved with has changed the way I live my life more than this.
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My train rides are almost never silent anymore.
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I met amazing people on planes and in cabs,
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Even just walking around town is more pleasant for me,
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whether I'm on campus or work or in a grocery store,
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because I made a habit of walking around with my head up,
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smiling and saying hello to other people,
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and I get in return a lot more smiles and hellos when I'm walking around.
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When I feel grateful, I write a note and send it off.
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When I need help, I'm less reluctant to ask for it.
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When I know someone needs some support,
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I'm not as embarrassed to reach out and offer it,
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even if there's nothing I can do in that moment.
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It's made me a more open,
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friendlier person, and as a result,
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changed pretty much all of my relationships.
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I've turned countless strangers into friends,
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or into acquaintances at least,
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even if just for a moment.
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My friendships are better.
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I think my marriage is stronger.
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I think I'm a better father.
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These changes didn't happen to me overnight.
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They happen, of course, slowly over time,
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just like you move a mountain,
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not by pushing it all at once,
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but one shovelful at a time.
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The way you change how you approach other people happens slowly over time,
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one choice after another,
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one small choice as you learn where your mistaken beliefs about other people might be holding you back needlessly.
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And then you develop habits that then just become part of your character and part of who you are.
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Overcoming my misplaced pessimism, though,
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has also affected how I've made some big choices that I have been a part of in my life,
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including when pain struck my family.
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So 10 years ago, my wife Jen was three months into her pregnancy.
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when we learned that our daughter,
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who we had already named Sophie,
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had Down syndrome, and three months after that,
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we learned that our daughter had died before she could be born.
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Losing our daughter was horrible.
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It was absolutely horrible.
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And we mourned that loss for many months.
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Until one morning, Jen and I were talking
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and she asked whether we could whether we should whether we might consider adopting a child with down syndrome
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and there it was the choice do you reach out
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and connect with someone do you engage with them do you approach
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or do you hold back and avoid it jen
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and i had already adopted two children into our family and and so we had some sense of how this might go.
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But nevertheless, this choice caught me off guard.
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I wasn't there at that moment.
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My mind wasn't there yet.
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And so I had all the pessimistic fears that you might have
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when you think about connecting with a stranger or having a deep conversation with someone,
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except multiplied by 100 or 1,000.
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How well would this go?
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Would we be able to handle this?
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Would we be able to connect,
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to love, to parent
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the stranger we were bringing into our lives with all of these challenges
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that seemed to me at the time very hard and difficult?
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How would this child respond to us?
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My first thought was, I don't think we can do this.
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I'm not sure I can do this.
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But my second thought then started turning to my data,
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as researchers will tell you can happen.
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And I started thinking about thousands and thousands of data points
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of people underestimating the joys they would experience when they reach out to engage with,
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to connect with, to pull someone else close to them.
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And it gave me data-driven courage.
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That, yeah, we can do this together.
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I happened to marry a superhero, too.
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We can do this together.
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And it won't just be good.
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I bet it'll be surprisingly good.
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And so about a year after that,
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Jen and I boarded a flight to China with our four other children where we were going to meet Lindsay,
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two years old, born to a woman we will never meet.
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with big, dark eyes and just a relentless smile to spark a really,
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really hard start in her life.
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We reached out to Lindsay,
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and Lindsay reached back to us.
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She's been bringing love and smiles like that into our lives for years since.
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Now, I want to be clear,
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raising a child with an intellectual disability is hard.
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It's really hard.
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Lindsay is not just one handful.
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She has both arms completely full.
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But she's also enriched and blessed our lives so far beyond what my pessimistic expectations beforehand ever possibly could have imagined.
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Connecting with other people is one of the most consistently enjoyable,
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enlightening and enriching experiences we'll ever have,
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and yet all too often our choice to reach out
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and connect with somebody is thwarted by overly pessimistic fears about how other people might respond.
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Being overly pessimistic doesn't mean we should reach out all the time time
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or that it always turns out well of course not what it means is
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that we tend to underestimate the likelihood that it will turn out well
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and as a result we tend to hold ourselves back a little too often i've found in my life
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and in my research that testing some of those beliefs
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that hold us back can reveal places where we're making mistakes about other people
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and show us how to reach out empower us to reach
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out a little bit more often than we might otherwise to make both our own lives
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and those we reach out to a little bit better.
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You want to change your life for the better?
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I suggest keeping some data-driven courage in mind.
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And when in doubt, reach out.
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Thank you so much.
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Why practice speaking with this video?
Engaging with Nicholas Epley's TED Talk, "The Simple Habit for a Happier Social Life," offers a unique opportunity to enhance your speaking skills while gaining insights into human interaction. This video is particularly valuable for IELTS speaking practice as it encourages learners to articulate thoughts about social connections, a common topic in speaking exams. By practicing with this video, you can improve your ability to discuss ideas fluently and confidently.
Moreover, the content emphasizes the importance of reaching out to others, an essential skill not just for exams but for real-life interactions. Listening to Epley’s reflections, you can adopt the shadowing technique, which allows you to mimic his intonation, rhythm, and pronunciation. This method not only aids in improving English pronunciation but also helps in understanding how to express thoughts clearly in social settings.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
Epley employs a variety of grammatical structures and expressions that are useful for English learners. Here are a few key points to focus on:
- Conditional sentences: Epley often uses conditional phrases such as "if being socially connected is so darn good for us, then why do we so often seem to be so darn unsocial?" This structure is crucial for discussing possibilities.
- Expressive language: Phrases like "hit me like a freight train" and "turned a stranger into a momentary acquaintance" enhance narrative style and express emotions vividly, helping learners to add flavor to their speaking.
- Direct speech: Epley's use of quotes, such as "Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me this morning," illustrates how to quote others, an important skill in conversation.
By practicing these structures, learners can build the tools necessary for effective communication, making them more confident in using English.
Common Pronunciation Traps
As you engage with this video, be mindful of certain pronunciation challenges:
- "Social": The 'sh' sound may be difficult for some learners; practice saying it gently transitioning from a 's' to a 'ch' sound.
- "Darn": Pay attention to the subtle vowel sound, which can vary depending on your native accent. It’s a great example of casual speech.
- "Connection": Focus on the 'n' sounds; they can blend into the following vowel, which might be tricky for clear pronunciation.
Utilizing the shadowing technique while paying attention to these tricky words can significantly enhance your spoken English. By imitating Epley's pronunciation and intonation, you not only improve your skills in a practical way but also deepen your understanding of the nuances of spoken English. You can learn English with YouTube effectively by integrating these practices into your routine.
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.
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