Shadowing Practice: the violent desire to be 'great' - Learn English Speaking with Video
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The End The End The End The End The End The End The End
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The End Holding me together and loving me and having patience with this obsession of me.
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But I want to say thank you to you.
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I haven't had an orthodox career.
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and I've wanted more than anything to have your respect.
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The first time I didn't feel it, but this time I feel it and I can't deny the fact that you like me right now.
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You like me.
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Well, I love people.
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I get afraid of people sometimes.
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There's a whole other life that I haven't really experienced that.
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Like friendship is a thing I'm just beginning to learn about.
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The fact that you have won the BMF title is so appropriate.
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The fact that you called, you stood there with 10 seconds to go and pointed at the center of the octagon and put Justin Gaethje away.
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It's one of the most special performances I've ever seen in my life.
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All I gotta say, I'm him.
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I'm him, guys.
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Guys, there's an El Malador.
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He is running away from the moon.
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I'm him.
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Why is it that our generation brags by calling ourselves somebody else?
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You might hear this phrase when somebody kills it on the court, or passes a hard test in school, or lands a job with a fancy title.
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But what does it imply about our goals if success is expressed by the phrase, I'm him.
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Not I'm me, I'm him. Who?
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You have within you a violent desire to be more.
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You are not who you could be, and you're painfully aware of that fact, so somewhere along the line,
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probably at 2am after binge watching motivational edits and ego gooning to hustle porn,
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You decided you're not like everybody else.
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You were, as they say, built different.
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You told yourself, I will do whatever it takes to become exceptional at...
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Well, that's not so important.
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What matters is that you become exceptional at it.
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You can decide exactly what it is later.
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What's your ambition, Blaze?
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Just to be instantly recognized.
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But for what?
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Famous for being famous.
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But not necessarily for anything particular.
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Exactly.
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Just famous for being fair.
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After all, it's not really about the sport or the entrepreneurship or the music or the academia.
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These things are not the destination.
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They are the vehicle and the destination is what?
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It's your name in lights and the relief of knowing that you're so good they can't ignore you
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Because it was never about being good.
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It was about not being ignored.
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But acknowledging that fact would mean admitting insecurity, and the greats you're inspired by aren't insecure, right?
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If you want to be one of the greats, you have to act like them, so you brush past the evidence of insecurity and tell yourself it's about the love of the game.
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Losing hurts more than winning feels good, but you don't let yourself think about that fact for long, otherwise you'll realize that you're not motivated by the joy of winning.
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You're not even motivated by the fear of losing, but by the fear of being a loser, of being a failure.
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It's a social identity thing.
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That's why winning just feels like relief and losing feels like a terminal diagnosis.
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Remember, you decided you're built different, so success merely maintains that ego, but failure.
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Failure is an existential threat to your entire sense of self.
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And by now, you've spent so many years tying your self-worth to your work that you can no longer tell them apart.
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This dream of yours has become a mountain, and the mountain is you.
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It's your own extraordinariness.
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And with each late night, each neglected relationship, each selfish decision, You are shoveling dirt onto this mountainous dream of yours.
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To other people it looks impressive, after all you'd have to be a god to build a whole mountain, but everyone's looking at what you built,
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nobody is looking at the gigantic hole you dug to source the dirt that it's made of.
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What others will see as an act of creation was really just an act of displacement, of redistribution.
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You poured all your character stats into one attribute and Pawn did offers growth.
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That's why you invest more into being respected than being respectable.
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No worries, though.
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If you hide your fear of being a failure well enough, then you might convince them that it took courage to become this successful.
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But you'll know.
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You'll know that it wasn't courage that made you jump off that tall cliff into the water.
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You were just so terrified of the wasp that you jumped without even thinking it through.
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Why?
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Because you've never even asked yourself how you would broach the challenge of loving yourself if you were… ordinary.
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Mediocrity, the fate of almost every human on earth and yet we have collectively transformed it into our generation's greatest boogeyman.
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The arrival of whom would signal all but a justification for suicide.
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Are you guys familiar with Dateline?
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They voted him Personality of the Week eight years ago.
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Failure's not an option.
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Somebody once said to me, what happens if you don't fail?
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Well I won't know because I'll probably be dead trying.
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Do your Sean Connery you did.
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Now, it might sound like I'm attacking ambition.
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I'm not.
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What I'm suggesting is that much of what passes for ambition is counterfeit.
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It's the fear of irrelevance dressed up as heroism.
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Why else would a whole generation be chasing the same goals?
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That's statistically improbable.
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The solution here is not to wage war against ambition
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or to tell people to settle for inauthentic office jobs just because they fit the mold.
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That's just the other side of the same fear.
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But when the culture reaches the point where satisfaction itself is viewed with contempt, maybe we have all gone mad.
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We don't need more hustle porn, because our generation is not at risk of being unambitious.
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We are at risk of suicide.
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And perhaps the incessant messaging that our value as humans is accurately reflected by our status, that the mere ordinary life is somehow shameful,
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is at least in part to blame.
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Hustlebots will tell you that they don't want to reach their deathbed and look back with regret.
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They will tell you that is why they work so hard
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But the most common deathbed regret is I wish I didn't work so hard
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Still once they're done watching this video They will continue gulping down the motivational kool-aid as
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if that one stat doesn't undermine their entire project Why?
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Because we were raised on this shit
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Marty supreme whiplash wolf of wall street peaky blinders We've been fed
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so much hustle porn that when we watch these tragic movies we walk out of the cinema feeling inspired.
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The characters in these movies are not heroes.
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These movies are supposed to be warnings about the dark side of counterfeit ambition.
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But we are so afraid of fading into obscurity, so terrified of being forgotten, that even the cost of glory is painted gold.
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I think being the greatest musician of the 20th century is anybody's idea of success.
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Dying broke and drunk and full of heroin at the age of 34 is not exactly my idea of success.
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I'd rather die drunk broke at 34
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and have people at a dinner table talk about me than live to be rich
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and sober at 90 and nobody remember who I was.
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The hero's journey has turned inward and we have made a monster of the so-called ordinary life.
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I'm sure they'll make great school board presidents someday.
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Oh, that's what this is all about?
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You think you're better than us? catch you on quickly and model you in.
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So for many of us, chasing greatness has become a kind of lifelong obsession.
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Obsession.
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This word used to describe a form of mental illness, but today it's a compliment.
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Because if we are obsessed, then maybe one day we will be great.
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And if we are great, then maybe we deserve to exist.
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That's that Mamba mentality, baby be?
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Our generation is often criticized for being entitled, for believing we are special snowflakes, but I think this is bullshit.
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The problem is not that we think we are special, it's the exact opposite.
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The problem is that we are terrified that we are not, and the so-called evidence
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that we think we are special is just the things we do to cope with the fear that we don't matter.
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Think about it, we grew up with the internet.
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The world is bigger than it's ever been for any generation before us.
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A few generations ago, the world was essentially your town, you were one of about a hundred people in your neighbourhood, of course you felt significant.
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But for Gen Z, the world really is the entire globe from the time we're
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toddlers overhearing Channel 4 news about the war in the Middle East, so of course we're existentially terrified of blending into the crowd.
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In other words, of not being special.
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On top of this, the attention economy has everyone screaming at the top of their lungs to be noticed, and all this noise raises the question,
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how will anyone hear me scream in a world this loud?
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Whether we notice it or not, I think our whole generation, our internet generation, has grown up with that question in the deepest parts of our souls.
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How will anyone hear us scream in a world this loud?
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why we craft identities that make us stick out.
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Which way, modern man?
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Dye your hair the most noticeable colour available and get involved in activism as an excuse to use a megaphone, or get on steroids at 15,
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learn how to do a crypto scam and post 300 stories about making moves in silence.
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Anything to be noticed, to be different, to be him.
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Fundamentally to be loved.
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It sounds soppy, but it's true.
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We pay a heavy price to acquire the love we feel we lack, but at the end of the night we all have to go home to ourselves.
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So you better make sure you still recognize your reflection in the mirror, otherwise all your years of hustling
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and grinding will have achieved nothing other than rallying public approval for a person that you're not.
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And that is a life of regret.
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Not an ordinary life with meaningful relationships, because maybe the ones who sacrifice those relationships for the sake of their own greatness are not the ones who are great,
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but the ones who feel the biggest need to be.
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Sacrifice okay, my life is the product of all the choices.
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I've had to make your life is a product I don't
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even know what your life is the product of you're just
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making up as you go along That's the kind of person you are that's not the kind of person.
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I am okay because I want to be great And you're not I Want to be one of the greats
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And I would stop you from doing that Yeah You're right,
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we should not be dating.
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And that paints their success in a very different light.
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It's still success, yes, but in much the same way as a heroin addict finding a ton of heroin is success.
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It's almost always at the expense of growth.
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Why else would all the grates seem so small behind closed doors?
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Perhaps their relentless pursuit of greatness is itself a form of cope.
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To name just a few examples, John Lennon preached peace and love, but beat his first wife and largely abandoned his son Julian.
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Steve Jobs denied paternity of his daughter Lisa for years, parked in handicapped spots, cried and bullied employees to get his way,
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and outsourced to sweatshops to cut costs.
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Stanley Kubrick was legendarily abusive to actors.
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Kobe Bryant said that the cost of greatness is not being a good friend,
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son or nephew, and then cheated on his wife with a 19 year old who reported him for rape.
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And of course not every famous person likes character, there are exceptions to the rule, but the very fact that there are exceptions is evidence of the rule.
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There's a reason why we have the phrase, never meet your heroes.
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And the saddest part about all of this is
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that many of us have subscribed so wholeheartedly to this narcissistic picture of greatness
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that we even emulate the faults of our heroes in an attempt to get closer to them.
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Remember when the Steve Jobs biopic came out
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and bosses all over the world started being assholes to their employees because they thought it would make them more like Steve?
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They could tell us it's lonely at the top and we would beg for loneliness.
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This is a form of tunnel vision so extreme that it could pass for mental illness, only it's so common, so pervasive,
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that we fail to notice it just as a fish fails to notice the water in which it swims.
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This is why the movie Whiplash was seen as inspiring by so many, when it was simply a character study of narcissism,
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and yet nobody, not even myself, batted an eye.
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No, I set the damn film as my lock screen.
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There are things in this world that are worth preserving,
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worth sacrificing for, and it will be a sign of a confident health
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when our own glory is no longer considered to be one of them.
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I'm writing this video as much as a note to self as to you,
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because I am very much one of the people I'm critiquing in this video.
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One of the most well-performing videos on my channel was essentially the opposite of this one.
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It was an ode to the pursuit of greatness.
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For years I wanted to be famous, to be great, and that desire was a symptom of my own immaturity.
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In other words, my desire for greatness was a thinly veiled attempt at distracting myself and others from my insecurities.
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It was incredibly motivating, of course, but when I got a small dose of what I was looking for, it did not fill me with the euphoria I had imagined.
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In reality, the approval of crowds didn't fill me with anything.
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It kind of felt like that scene in Kung Fu Panda, when he finally gets the dragon scroll and, spoiler alert, it was empty.
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I had dreamt for years about how success would rewrite history and justify my existence and all of the suffering it contained,
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but when I finally opened the first installment of my oh-so-sought-after prize, there was simply nothing inside.
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Maybe bursts of excitement, sure, but nothing lasting.
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And even that excitement was just anticipation for a promised land that never arrived.
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Fame is flash paper.
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And before you say it, I know, a couple of well-performing YouTube videos is not fame, but it's the first step on that ladder,
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and it was enough to give me a sense of where it leads.
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So please, if you are someone who feels the need to be great, If you are someone who thought the movie Whiplash was inspiring,
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listen to me when I say, there is simply no there, there.
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And for the love of God, do not listen to Goggins.
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I love Goggins, but please do not listen to him.
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Do not sacrifice the people who actually matter to you as
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if they were some sort of dead weight holding you back from climbing your mountain of greatness.
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Because the person you become on the way up is the person who arrives at the top.
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so you'd better make sure that person isn't lonely.
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I'm not saying that anyone who is pursuing exposure on their personal brand fits the picture I've been painting in this video.
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I'm not saying you should quit whatever it is that you are working on.
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All I'm saying is that you should take a really honest look at the reasons why you are pursuing what you're pursuing.
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Because many people will like to put forth pure reasons, not so much to convince you of those reasons, but to convince themselves.
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They will say they want to become a world-class musician because they love it, and that they simply need exposure as a means to that end.
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But all too often, it's the other way around.
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Their true goal is exposure, and their guitar is merely the means of acquiring it.
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Truth is, whether you're blindly pursuing a safe office job to fit in, or blindly pursuing fame and glory to stand out,
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Whether you're a white sheep or a black sheep, you're still just a sheep.
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If you are one of those people, then sure, one day you will get what you're looking for, and that will be your punishment.
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Kurt Cobain killed himself at 27.
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What do you think he meant when he said, I tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn't even matter?
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Wait, it wasn't Kurt Cobain who said that.
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It was Chester Bennington from Linkin Park who also killed himself.
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He didn't say I tried so hard and failed and that's why I'm depressed.
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No, he got what he wanted and found it was made of air.
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The problem with trying to become a star is that success leaves you floating alone in space.
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George Sanders, an Oscar-winning actor, a star of stars, left a suicide note in which he said, Dear world, I am leaving you because I am bored.
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Praise only lands when it wasn't the goal, and even then, not for long.
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I think what we are all really looking for is love, and praise is her evil twin that steals her identity and seduces us into bed under false pretenses,
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only for us to wake up and find her gone by the morning, having been nothing but a diversion.
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I'm aware that all of this might sound kind of doomer-y to those still enamoured by the charms of Lady Praise, hoping for a long and fulfilling life by her side.
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After all, nobody wants to hear that the person they've been chasing and struggling to get is actually kind of a slut.
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But I promise you, Praise is a stripper that you pay with time.
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And if telling you that the stripper doesn't love you is a doomer take, then fuck it, paint me grey.
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I'd much rather you find someone who does, I'd much rather you find you,
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someone who your audience will never know.
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Thank you.
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The End
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Thank you.
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I am the oppressor of the person I condemn, not his friend and fellow sufferer.
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I do not in the least mean to say that we must never pass judgment when we desire to help and improve.
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But if the doctor wishes to help a human being, he must be able to accept him as he is.
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and he can do this in reality only when he has already seen and accepted himself as he is.
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Perhaps this sounds very simple but simple things are always the most difficult.
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In actual life it requires the greatest art to be simple
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and so acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the acid test of one's whole outlook on life.
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that I feed the beggar, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ, all these are undoubtedly great virtues.
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What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ.
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But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yea, the very fiend himself,
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that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the arms of my own kindness,
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that I myself am the enemy who must be loved.
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What then?
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Then, as a rule, the whole truth of Christianity is reversed.
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There is then no more talk of love and long-suffering.
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We say to the brother within us, Raka, and condemn and rage against ourselves.
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We hide him from the world.
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We deny ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves.
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And had it been God himself who drew near to us in this despicable form, we should have denied him a thousand times before a single cock had crowed.
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Healing may be called, Jung says, a religious problem.
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In the sphere of social or national relations, the state of suffering may be civil war,
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and this state is to be cured by the Christian virtue of forgiveness and love of one's enemies.
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That which we recommend with the conviction of good Christians as applicable to external situations, we must also apply inwardly in the treatment of neurosis.
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This is why modern man has heard enough about guilt and sin.
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He is sorely beset by his own bad conscience.
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and wants rather to know how he is to reconcile himself with his own nature, how he is to love the enemy in his own heart and call the wolf his brother.
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The modern man does not want to know in what way he can imitate Christ, but in what way he can live his own individual life,
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however meager and uninteresting it may be.
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It is because every form of imitation seems to him deadening and sterile,
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that he rebels against the force of tradition that would hold him to well-trodden ways.
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All such roads for him lead in the wrong direction.
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He may not know it, but he behaves as if his own individual life were God's special will, which must be fulfilled at all costs.
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This is the source of his egoism, which is one of the most tangible evils of the neurotic state.
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but the person who tells him he is too egoistic has already lost his confidence and rightly so
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for that person has driven him still further into his neurosis
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if I wish to effect a cure for my patients I
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am forced to acknowledge the deep significance of their egoism I should be blind indeed
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if I did not recognize it as a true will of God
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I must even help the patient to prevail in his egoism.
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If he succeeds in this, he estranges himself from other people.
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He drives them away, and they come to themselves as they should, for they were seeking to rob him of his sacred egoism.
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This must be left to them, for it is his strongest and healthiest power.
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It is, as I have said, a true will of God, which sometimes drives him into complete isolation.
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However wretched this state may be, it also stands him in good stead.
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For in this way alone can he get to know himself
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and learn what an invaluable treasure is the love of his fellow beings.
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It is moreover only in the state of complete abandonment and loneliness that we experience the helpful powers of our own natures.
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When one has several times seen this development at work, one can no longer deny that what was evil has turned to good,
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and that what seemed good has kept alive the forces of evil.
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The archdemon of egoism leads us along the royal road to that ingathering which religious experience demands.
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What we observe here is a fundamental law of life, enantiodromia, or conversion into the opposite.
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And it is this that makes possible the reunion of the warring halves of the personality, and thereby brings the civil war to an end.
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Thank you.
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Why Practice Speaking with This Video?
This video is a goldmine for english speaking practice because it blends casual conversational tone with introspective storytelling, mirroring real-life communication. The speaker’s mix of personal anecdotes, rhetorical questions, and emotional expression creates a dynamic context that trains your ear to follow natural speech flow—perfect for shadow speech exercises. By mimicking the pacing and emphasis, you’ll learn to convey complex ideas with clarity, a skill vital for everyday interactions. Plus, the relatable theme of ambition makes it easy to engage, keeping your practice sessions focused and meaningful.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
The video is rich with practical language structures. Here are key ones to master:
- "I haven't had an orthodox career." The present perfect tense ("haven't had") is used to connect past experiences to the present, a common structure in sharing life stories. Practice this to talk about your own background.
- "Why is it that our generation brags by calling ourselves somebody else?" The "why is it that..." structure is ideal for posing thoughtful questions. It adds depth to conversations, making you sound more articulate.
- "You were, as they say, built different." The phrase "as they say" is a natural filler that softens statements, a must for sounding conversational. Use it to reference common beliefs or sayings.
Common Pronunciation Traps
Several words in the video can trip up learners. Watch out for:
- "Orthodox" (or-thuh-doks): Don’t stress the first syllable; the emphasis is on "thuh."
- "Entrepreneurship" (ahn-truh-pruh-nur-ship): Break it into chunks to avoid rushing the "pr" and "nur" sounds.
- "Insecurity" (in-suh-kyoor-i-tee): The "kyoor" sound is often mispronounced as "kyur"—slow down to hit the "ee" vowel clearly.
For extra practice, use a shadowing app to replay these sections, matching the speaker’s intonation and rhythm. Tools like shadowspeaks can help refine your pronunciation, ensuring you sound natural in real conversations.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | I've been painting · they've been chasing |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | haven't had · I've wanted · haven't really experienced |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is expressed · be instantly recognized · being ignored |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | ones who sacrifice · ones who feel · someone who feels |
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.