Shadowing Practice: Think Like a Champion, Speak Like a Native (Book Club Part 2) - Learn English Speaking with Video
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The Champions Mind.
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How great athletes think, train and thrive.
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So this is a book about athletes, high performers, the champions.
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How do they think differently?
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How do they practice differently?
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What do they do differently that makes them champions?
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That's the topic of this book.
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Today we're doing the rest of the book.
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This is part two.
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Part one, I did chapters one and two.
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Go watch that if you haven't.
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And then today I think we're going to finish the rest of the book.
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Now, of course, we can use a lot of these ideas for other areas of life, not just being an athlete.
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Because, you know, being a champion, being a top athlete has a lot in common with being,
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you know, a top business person, a top performer, right?
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Achieving top levels of English speaking, top levels of motivation, top levels of skill in anything that's difficult.
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So that's why we're reading this book, to learn some of these ideas.
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But specifically, we will focus in this book club on the ideas we can use in all parts of life,
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not just sports.
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All right, so as usual, I'll go through, give you the big ideas from the book, teach you a little bit of vocabulary.
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Now, here's the thing.
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A lot of these nonfiction books, to be honest, they get very repetitive.
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Okay, so they will, I mean, often a lot of these books,
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they're really stretching to make a book.
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In other words, they have enough ideas for maybe two chapters, but they want to make a longer book, make it 10 chapters.
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So they start to repeat the same things again and again and again, right?
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I read a lot of nonfiction books, and this is very common.
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so while I like this book it has a lot of good ideas in it it does have
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that problem it starts to get repetitive as I read the
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rest of the book to prepare for this book club you know it started to repeat itself again
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and again so I'm not going to do this book for three four
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or five shows there's no point
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because to be honest it's starting to repeat itself a lot
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okay that's okay it's sometimes good to repeat good ideas so we learn them more deeply.
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Repetition helps us learn.
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But I'm going to just finish the book today and then move on to another book which is very interesting.
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My most popular book clubs have been philosophical books, books that have deep messages,
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big ideas, deep thoughts, right?
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This is more surface.
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It's still useful.
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We need these kind of practical, useful ideas to help us in different parts of life.
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But we also need to look at life at a lot deeper level.
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So, you know, my most popular book clubs by far are books like Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Alchemist.
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where we're looking at some pretty deep and important ideas and topics.
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The next book I'll do is going to be a book called How to Slay a Wizard.
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And it fits very well with Animal Farm and Brave New World.
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So the next book I'll do really is about how do we solve the problem of Brave New World,
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of Animal Farm.
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As individuals, you and I, what do we do living in this world of lies and propaganda and mind control?
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All of that.
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How do we see through it? And break the spell.
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I'm excited about the next book.
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The next book, we will go chapter by chapter because it has great ideas in it.
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And it's really fantastic.
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And I think you're going to enjoy the next book because it gets very deep.
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But let's go with this book because this book also still has some very useful ideas.
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So let's just go ahead and get into it.
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So chapter three, the book is called The Champion's Mind, How Great Athletes Think, Train and Thrive.
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Okay, but I'm going to go quickly because, like I said, it is getting repetitive.
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So the author says there are differences between playing not to lose and playing to win.
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This chapter begins with a quote from Michael Jordan, where basically Michael Jordan says that he's always trying to win, even when he's practicing or when he did practice.
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He's not competing anymore, but he would always try his best,
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even just practicing, even a little practice game with his teammates.
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right so the author talks about how champions have this idea they play to win not to avoid losing
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and this is a key idea in life right
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because it's a different mindset playing to win playing not to
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lose playing not to lose is a fearful mindset it's a
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fear motivation right i don't want to lose i don't want
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to lose i don't want to make mistakes i don't want to look foolish, right?
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It's really a negative motivation.
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It's a fear motivation, fear of losing, fear of something bad happening.
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That's not how champions think.
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Champions focus on the positive part, right?
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They're playing to win.
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They're focused on winning.
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They're not thinking about losing at all.
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If they make mistakes, they just let them go and they keep going, right they don't get upset about mistakes they're focused on winning
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so this is a great point in life for making goals for your entire focus of life right
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because we a lot of people have a fear-based motivation They're playing life not to lose,
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not to look foolish, not to fail, not to make mistakes.
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They're so focused on the negative, avoiding the negative.
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And the problem with that is when you focus on the negative, even to avoid it, you actually get attracted to it.
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You're actually more likely to have those negative things happen.
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When you focus on the positive in life, you're more likely to achieve it, even when you do make mistakes, even when you have problems, even when you fail sometimes, and you will.
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So it's a good general mindset to keep in mind.
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Okay, now I'm going to go quickly through this.
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I'll share my screen.
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I don't know if it's helpful to share my screen, but I'll do it.
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Ooh, I've got two people.
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I've got two AJs here on the screen.
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Where's my screen?
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Hmm.
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All right, technical problems.
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Never mind.
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I guess I won't share my screen today.
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All right, it's fine.
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We'll go back to just, I'll just read it to you.
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Okay, so next section, leave everything else in your mental locker.
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Throughout the duration of your practice or your game, do not mentally process any personal concerns.
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Now, this is great.
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This is exactly what I've been teaching you in my recent videos about English learning.
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It's the same idea.
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So let me explain what this means.
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Throughout the duration means during the time of your practice or game.
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So while you're practicing, that could be English, while you're listening, right?
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While you're practicing pronunciation, while you're shadowing, while you're whatever.
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Chatting with an AI, doesn't matter. Or your game.
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For an athlete, a game is right when they're actually competing.
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For you, a game would be when you're actually having a conversation in English with somebody, right?
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So when you're doing all this, do not mentally process any personal concerns.
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What does that mean?
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Mentally means your mind thinking.
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Mentally process means thinking.
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Personal concerns means anything else you're worried about.
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So he gives an example of an athlete who's a student.
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and during the game and during practice, don't be thinking about your test scores.
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Don't be thinking about, oh, I have a math test tomorrow, right?
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Anything that's not connected to the game.
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So he says you emphasize, champions emphasize the here and now.
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They're just focused on what they're doing right now.
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That's all.
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And they're not worried about any of that other stuff, right?
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We call this mindfulness, presence.
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There's various words we can use.
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How does that apply to you?
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It means when you're having a conversation in English, just focus on communicating your ideas.
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Just focus on listening and understanding, listening to and understanding the other person and saying what you want to say.
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Don't think about grammar.
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Don't think about translations.
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Don't think about making mistakes or worrying about making mistakes.
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None of that.
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You just push all that out of your mind and just focus on actual communication.
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Just connecting with the other person.
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That's all you focus on.
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And it's good advice.
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It's good advice for sports.
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And it's good advice for communication, anything in life.
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All right, let's keep on going.
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I said I'm going to go quickly today because there's a lot of repetition in here.
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We don't need to go word for word through this.
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Another good point.
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This is good for life.
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Celebrate what you want to see happen more often.
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Celebrate.
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Yay!
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What you want to see happen more often.
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What does that mean?
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Celebrate your successes more often.
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Even small ones.
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Now, this can be a tough one.
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Because what do we tend to do?
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We want to focus on our failures.
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and put our energy and our focus on our failures in sports, English, communication, everything, right?
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This was hard for me, like doing jujitsu, for example.
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It was really easy and it was natural to focus on my mistakes.
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Go and practice and I'm trying to do a new technique and I don't do it.
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And then the other guy beats me, right?
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And then what do I do when I'm walking home?
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What am I thinking about?
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I'm thinking about, ah, what happened?
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Oh, I made a mistake oh I didn't do that right oh
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that guy beat me right and I'm
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and I start focusing all this negative stuff
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and he's saying what champions do is they focus on the positive they find even something small
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that they did well and they focus on that and they celebrate it yeah I did that so like
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for my jujitsu example instead what I should do is I go to jujitsu and okay maybe I make mistakes You know, I'm not great.
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So it's always going to happen.
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Other people are better than me.
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They're going to beat me.
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So just, you know, but maybe I did one thing.
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Well, I'm working on this one thing and I and I did that technique better than, you know, I finally did something I've been working on.
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So when I'm walking home after practice, that's what I should focus on.
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I did that.
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Finally did it.
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And think about it and focus on it and say, yes, I did it.
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I did it.
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And you focus on your little successes.
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For your English, it's the same thing.
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When you learn a new phrase, when you manage to communicate something, you focus on what is good and you celebrate it.
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Yeah, I did that.
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And you pump yourself up and you get excited about what you did well.
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And the mistakes and the problems you kind of push aside.
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You don't focus on those.
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You don't give them energy.
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You don't give them your emotion.
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And then the next section of this book, this chapter, talks about something I discuss a lot,
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which is, you know, motivation and energy and getting your energy up before practice, before a game.
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And he gives some advice, which I give to all my students about English, which is just, you know, play some motivational music, some exciting music, right?
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Music is emotional.
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So if you play some exciting music right before you listen to English, it'll raise up your energy.
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It'll raise your mood.
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Everything gets a little better, right?
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And athletes do this.
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You'll see a lot of athletes.
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Sometimes they'll have even their little their headphones on right before they're, you know, I've seen this with swimmers in the Olympics.
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You know, they they don't want people distracting them.
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So they're playing some kind of music.
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Probably it's music that is positive, that makes them feel confident.
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right?
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Each athlete has their own favorite music and you can use this in your own life too.
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You could do this before a job interview.
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Instead of just sitting there getting really worried, you know, you could maybe at least on the bus ride or the train ride over to the
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interview or the car ride, you could be listening to some,
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you know, exciting, fun music to help you feel more excited instead of nervous.
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All right, then he has a nice phrase here, which comes from, I learned it from like the military.
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I was never in the military, but I read books by guys in the military.
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This is a phrase that they use in the military.
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Improvise, adapt, and overcome.
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Improvise, adapt, overcome.
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Improvise, adapt, overcome.
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And what this means is that don't be stuck in your thinking.
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You have to be flexible.
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What this really means is you must expect, you must know, you will have problems.
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There will be failures.
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There will be difficulties.
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Absolutely, yes.
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Always, in everything.
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In sports, in communication, language learning, in business, in your relationships, everything.
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There will always be problems coming up.
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Always be difficulties, always be challenges.
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And the mindset, the belief, the idea you need to have is this improvise, adapt, overcome.
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It means you don't complain about the problems.
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It's easy to do.
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It's human nature.
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We all do it.
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But it's better to have this idea that, okay, improvise.
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Improvise means you're creative.
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You try new things.
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Adapt means you accept what's happening and then you change.
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You're ready to change.
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If the situation changes, it means you can change.
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You can adapt.
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And overcome means you succeed.
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You solve the problem.
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You overcome the challenge.
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So this is a good mindset.
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Next, he talks about, again, positive self-talk.
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And you'll see what I mean by it gets repetitive but it's saying the same thing in a little different way.
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And this is the idea with goals, when you're talking to yourself, right?
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We make little phrases we say to ourselves, you know, I'm strong, I can do it.
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I'm a great English speaker.
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You know, that's all great.
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You want to say those things to yourself.
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You want to think them a lot.
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He says you have to be careful though, avoid fear or negative based self-talk.
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So, for example, using that same example, you could say, you know, I'm strong.
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That's positive, right?
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I'm strong.
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Negative would be, I'm not weak.
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I'm not weak is negative because the word weak is negative, right?
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It's what you don't want.
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So even though you're saying not, you're still focusing on weak and weakness.
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It's a negative kind of self-talk and the way our brains work, when we say things in that negative way,
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it actually can actually make us feel worse and weaker.
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It's that same fear motivation, right?
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Avoiding weakness instead of being strong.
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It's a small difference, but actually very powerful and important.
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So it's the same thing.
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You don't say, I'm not a bad English speaker.
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I don't make mistakes.
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That's all fear and negative.
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You just say, I'm a strong English speaker.
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I'm a confident English speaker.
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Much better.
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All right.
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Now on to chapter four, which is called The Wisdom of a Champion.
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Okay.
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He says, take a mastery approach.
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What is a mastery approach?
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He says, there are two types of athletes, those who seek awards and those who focus on mastery.
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What this is really about is those who are focused internally and externally. So seeking awards.
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It's about approval.
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It's about getting other people to like you, other people to think you're great.
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The opposite of that, or the one he's recommending, is mastery, where you just focus on being the best you can.
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And you might lose and you might win.
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You might become a champion.
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You might not.
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But you're just focused on being your best, being your best.
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Right.
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Being a master.
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Trying to be excellent yourself, the best you can be.
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And that that is a far more positive thing and more powerful.
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And that's how champions think.
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and yes they love to win of course
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and they love to get the awards there you know they all they enjoy all those things
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but they're that's not the main thing for them their focus on mastery becoming masters
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and he has a quote here success is peace of mind it's the result of self-satisfaction
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and this is a quote from John Wooden, one of my favorite coaches.
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It's the self-satisfaction knowing you made the effort to do your best, to become the best you are capable of becoming.
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And I love John Wooden because John Wooden was probably the greatest basketball coach ever in the United States.
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He was a college basketball coach.
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and he never talked about winning.
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He just always talked about doing your best and being your best.
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And he even said, he said, you can't control winning because he said sometimes the other team's just better.
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Right?
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If the other team's just better, then they're going to win.
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They deserve to win.
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So you can't really control that.
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Right?
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You can only control yourself being the best you can be.
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And when you do that, there's a peace of mind.
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You feel more peaceful, more calm, because you're not afraid of losing so much anymore.
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And you're not as obsessed with winning.
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Of course, you want to win.
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You do your best.
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But when you know you have done your best, when you're focused on that,
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then you can just relax and whatever happens, happens.
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You know, in Sanatana Dharma, this is called equanimity.
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And the philosophy is that all results belong to God in the end.
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Meaning, we do what we can do.
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We do our best.
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But in the end, we don't control the world.
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We don't control what happens.
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So we have to let go of all that.
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Help me.
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Okay, hi, baby.
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Help me, Mom.
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You will bless Mommy.
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Come away.
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Sorry, guys.
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I got to key it in here.
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One second.
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Can you go in there, baby?
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I'll be out in a minute.
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Okay.
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See what I mean?
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Do your best.
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Can't always control what happens.
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My son doesn't like when I'm in here working.
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He wants me to be playing with him.
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All right, let's go.
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All right, here's another one.
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Champions quickly forget mistakes, especially during competition.
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Now I've heard this one in many different interviews with athletes.
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I've heard this one especially in the area of golf but really in all different sports.
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I've heard again and again and again like the top level people talk about this and coaches too,
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not just the players, the coaches where they're always telling their players, the best coaches.
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let's say it's a big game and a player makes a mistake the coach will say forget about it
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forget about it focus on now right
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because they all know that when you focus on mistakes
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when you start getting upset about mistakes it kills your confidence it distracts you
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and that means you're probably going to make more mistakes
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and more mistakes and more mistakes and you can see this in sports we've seen this
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you know anyone who likes sports you've seen this happen you've seen individuals do this.
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You've seen whole teams do this, right?
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Where they're going along and then something bad happens in the game.
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And then they start to fall apart, right?
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They start to fall apart because they start losing their confidence.
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They made a mistake.
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The other team does, you know, get some points.
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Now the game is getting closer.
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And then suddenly they start losing their confidence.
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They start making more mistakes, more mistakes.
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And the other team starts doing better and better and they lose, right?
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And there's some famous examples of this in golf where you'll have a golfer.
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He's winning the tournament.
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It's the last day of the tournament.
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He's ahead of everybody else and he makes a bad shot.
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And instead of forgetting it and just letting it go, what happens?
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He starts to get nervous.
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He starts getting upset.
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He gets, ah, right?
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And then when he gets upset about the mistake, he's thinking about it.
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He's focused on it.
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He makes another bad shot and then just falls apart and loses the tournament.
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And there's some very famous examples of this.
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If you're a golfer, you could probably think of some.
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Okay, it's a very common thing.
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So champions just accept mistakes.
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They know that mistakes will happen, and they just let them go.
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It happens.
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It's a mistake.
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Let it go.
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Focus on now.
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This certainly is true for you and your English.
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because I've seen this with students.
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I've seen this with students so many times where they'll make a mistake and then they get upset about it.
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And then they start thinking more and more about grammar.
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And then what happens?
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Their speaking actually gets worse.
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Right there in the moment, their speaking gets worse because they get more and more distracted.
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They stop focusing on just talking and communicating and relaxing.
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And now they're thinking about English and in grammar rules.
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vocabulary and their confidence goes down and their actual ability to speak goes down.
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This happens in tests, like TOEFL tests.
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It's very common.
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You got to let go of mistakes.
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Mistakes happen.
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Mistakes are unavoidable.
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They will always happen.
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I make mistakes in English. So what?
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And then finally in this chapter, he says, never stop training, never stop learning is another idea that champions have.
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And this is just Kaizen.
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It's constant and never-ending improvement.
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It's a basic idea of life that we're always trying to grow.
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So it's good to have big dreams and goals. can be motivating.
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You put them on the wall and think about them sometimes.
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But it's also important just every day you just focus on making a tiny little improvement.
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Because day to day, week to week, you will not make a huge improvement.
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Right?
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It's very rare.
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Sometimes it happens but usually no. Okay?
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So will you become fluent in English in one week?
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No!
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If you're not fluent now, you're not going to be fluent next week, right?
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And if you focused on trying to do that, it's just going to make you upset, right?
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So you focus, what do you focus on?
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You just, I just make a small improvement this week.
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Learn a few new words.
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Improve my listening a little bit.
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Right?
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A little bit, a little bit, a little bit.
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But those little bits add up, add up, add up.
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And after months, six months of little improvement, they can add up to something quite big.
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Okay.
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Next.
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Now, the book starts to get very repetitive here, so I'm going to zoom through this part.
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He talks about how champions,
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great athletes, have what he calls a good pre-shot routine or a pre-competition routine.
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So this is really exactly what I teach in my BIP course and Power English, which in this is an NLP.
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This is called anchoring.
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What does it mean?
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What this means is that you create a like a little ritual.
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You create a routine, something you do every time to prepare yourself.
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before you practice and before you compete, if you're an athlete, or before you have a conversation, or before you do a job interview, before you do a presentation, anything.
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And that routine, it means you take the same steps every time to basically to make yourself feel the most confident possible,
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to have the best concentration.
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So that might mean you jump up and down and get in a big peak emotional state.
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You're feeling great arms in the air.
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You play some exciting music.
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Yes, you've got that.
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And you can play the same song every time that makes you feel excited.
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Right.
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And maybe you imagine in your mind, you know, yourself doing a great job.
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And maybe you have a few phrases you say to yourself, I'm a great speaker.
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I'm a great speaker.
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I'm a great speaker.
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Something like that.
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And you do that every time before you listen to English, before you have a conversation in English.
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or if it's sports, you do it every time before your practice or your game.
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And it's just getting your mind ready for the performance.
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Okay, the next chapter he calls Zen in the Zone.
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And this is just a chapter about mindfulness.
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So we're coming back again to this mindfulness idea.
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That means when you are actually doing your practice or competition.
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For you, that means when you're actually listening to English or speaking or shadowing, or when you're having a conversation, when you're in the job interview,
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when you're giving your presentation in English, you're focused just right now on this moment.
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You're not worrying about mistakes.
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You're not thinking about the future.
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You're not thinking about the past.
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You're in the moment, right?
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Zen, mindfulness, presence.
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Right?
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Only now.
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And you just clear your mind of everything else.
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And this is the, in sports they call this being in the zone.
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It's a little bit of slang.
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In the zone. In the zone.
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The zone means an area.
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What that means is in the zone means not too excited, not too relaxed, right?
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Not too, you know, worried about goals, but not too lazy, right?
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It's kind of the, it means you're in the perfect area, the perfect place.
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And of course, here we're talking about mental and emotional space.
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So it just means you've got the perfect mindset when you're in the zone.
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And again, you'll see this with Michael Jordan's a great example.
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You would see in some games, especially the big games, the championship games, he would just suddenly take over the game, right?
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Like he just suddenly starts scoring tons of points.
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Every shot, he's hitting every shot and making it.
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Like everything's working.
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He was in the zone.
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And to get in the zone means you have zero distractions.
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Your mind, you're really not even thinking, right?
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And in Zen, they talk about this.
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They call it no mind.
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In Zen Buddhism, it's not really no mind.
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It just means no chattering, right?
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No distracted mind.
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You're so completely focused on what you see, what you hear, what you feel, what's happening.
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You're not analyzing it.
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You're not worrying about it.
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You're just in this moment, 100% concentration.
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That's where you want to be.
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That's the zone.
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Now, ideally, it's not always possible.
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It's not always easy to do this.
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But ideally, when you're listening to, let's say you're listening to one of my Power English lessons, to a mini story lesson, you want to be in that zone.
487
you just have all your focus and concentration on what you're hearing answering the questions
488
good emotion and you're not thinking about what does this word mean what does
489
that word mean I don't know oh am I saying this right you're not none of that
490
you're just completely 100% in the moment focused on what you're doing only
491
there's you know techniques you can do to improve this including
492
meditation different kinds of meditation the simplest meditation is uh you know i've talked about this
493
so many books talk about this it's a common thing you know breath meditation breath meditation is useful
494
because if you're alive it means you have you're breathing so it's and it's always happening right now in this moment.
495
So it's just a little mental technique where you can stop,
496
you can close your eyes even so you're less distraction and you just focus,
497
you try to put all your mental focus on your breathing.
498
You don't try to change your breathing, you're just noticing it, observing it, watching it with your mind as it comes in.
499
And so if you're breathing fast, you just notice you're breathing fast.
500
If you're breathing slowly, you notice that.
501
And then the idea is that if your concentration is 100%, then you're not thinking about anything else.
502
But what you will actually notice when you try to do this is
503
that you'll have all kinds of thoughts popping into your head.
504
Tons of distractions, right?
505
Try it.
506
Try it.
507
After you watch this video, you know, sit, turn off the video and just sit.
508
Close your eyes.
509
Focus on the breathing, you know, at your nose.
510
Try to focus on that only and nothing else.
511
And notice how many distracting thoughts pop into your head.
512
For most people, it's constant and it's a lot.
513
When you practice this more, you'll notice those distractions get quieter and quieter,
514
less and less, fewer and fewer.
515
they're usually still there, but much less.
516
That means your concentration, your mindfulness is much better.
517
Now in a game like in sports, it's possible that sometimes the athlete is so focused,
518
there's none of those thoughts at all.
519
They just do what they've been practicing and training to do.
520
They're not thinking about it at all.
521
or if someone has been really, really meditating a lot, then they can just sit there
522
and it's only the breathing that they're noticing and absolutely nothing else enters their mind, just this moment only.
523
And breathing is one thing you can focus on.
524
You could also focus on the feelings in your body.
525
It's called sensations, the actual physical feelings in your body.
526
That's called Vipassana.
527
There's lots of other techniques you could do, but you get the idea.
528
Okay.
529
We are almost done with this book.
530
You see what I mean?
531
It's kind of, you know, these big ideas.
532
Then in the next chapter, he just kind of has some interviews with different athletes that discuss these same ideas we've been talking about.
533
And then finally, the next chapter is your world-class game plan.
534
So this is where he says, make a plan for yourself to change your mind so you have a champion's mind.
535
And then he's got these different categories.
536
So number one, goal setting.
537
Write down your goals and they need to be measurable and clear and positive.
538
Two, mental imagery.
539
So you need to be able to make a movie in your mind and actually see yourself succeeding.
540
With English, that means you would see or hear, I guess, in your mind, yourself speaking English confidently.
541
Maybe in a high-pressure situation, like giving a presentation.
542
You're standing in front of a group, and you see yourself in your mind, like a movie, giving a presentation in English,
543
and you look confident, you sound great.
544
Number three, self-talk.
545
This is where you come up with some phrases that you say to yourself again and again and again.
546
I'm a great English speaker.
547
I'm a confident speaker.
548
I love speaking English.
549
English is fun.
550
English is easy.
551
English feels effortless to me.
552
You could have three, four, five of those and repeat them to yourself again and again and again and again and again every day.
553
Self-talk.
554
Positive self-talk.
555
Next is confidence.
556
So, you know, this is again this idea of building up your confidence, training it.
557
Confidence is not an accident.
558
And you can do that in a quick way by using, you know, all those things I talked about,
559
you know, where you're high energy playing music and practicing English with a loud voice and strong body.
560
And you start to teach yourself, train yourself, practice feeling confident.
561
every time you speak English.
562
Focus and breath control are the next categories.
563
So this is where you train your mind to be more focused and that might be some mindfulness meditation, breath meditation.
564
Next category he says is mental toughness.
565
So practice and see yourself being tough in bad situations,
566
being tough when you make a mistake, being tough when you fail, not quitting, not giving up.
567
Okay, anxiety management is the next category for your plan.
568
This is connected to that peak state confidence training.
569
Anxiety means worry, nervousness, management.
570
It means It's natural.
571
You have a job interview.
572
It's in English.
573
Are you going to feel nervous?
574
Yeah, of course you will.
575
If you really want that job, yeah, of course you will.
576
So you need to actually practice dealing with the feeling of nervousness, dealing with the feeling of anxiety and worry.
577
Right?
578
Using some of the techniques we've discussed in this book already and others which I teach.
579
Next category says for your plan, enjoyment.
580
Make a plan to make your practice more enjoyable, right?
581
Because champions enjoy playing their game.
582
They enjoy their sport, right?
583
They like it.
584
They enjoy it.
585
That's why I always say play English, right?
586
Don't study English, play English.
587
I'm always trying to encourage my students to relax and enjoy English.
588
Just enjoy communicating and enjoy listening.
589
Enjoy it, make it fun.
590
It's why my mini story lessons are so funny and weird.
591
You should be enjoying it.
592
Body language is his next category, which connects to confidence, because it's probably the number one way to improve your confidence.
593
It's just to improve your body language, your posture, shoulders back, head up, smile, all those simple things.
594
They help.
595
And he's got a couple others which are the same.
596
There's repetitions of what he's already said.
597
So he's like, make a plan and make that plan very specific in each of those areas.
598
Then he says, pre-game mental prep.
599
So here again, he says, make yourself a routine, which we already discussed this.
600
But you want to actually, you know, write down and plan out.
601
What is my routine?
602
what am I going to do pre-game means before a game right pre means before
603
so for you with English
604
that might be before a job interview before a presentation before
605
a meeting where you have to speak English don't just go
606
into it hoping right have a plan what am I going
607
to do before the meeting before the job interview before the presentation
608
so I'm feeling confident feeling good less nervous and
609
that could include things like you know you're practicing your body language you're jumping up
610
and down to get the peak state you have some music
611
you're gonna play maybe you do some shadowing you make your own routine right
612
and then you want to do
613
that routine every time do it every time before you practice before you listen to English
614
or speak English and definitely do it before those important moments like meetings presentations interviews even just conversations.
615
Okay, finally he talks about mental errors or making errors.
616
Again, reminding us, what do you do when you make a mistake?
617
He says, stick to what you know and what has made you successful.
618
In other words, focus on what you're good at.
619
Don't get distracted by the mistakes.
620
Don't focus on them because then you'll make even more mistakes.
621
Because when you focus on your mistakes, it kills your confidence.
622
When your confidence goes down, your performance goes down.
623
So you have to train yourself, teach yourself to make mistakes and just laugh about them.
624
Just let them go and then focus back on what you're good at.
625
For English situation, this just means you focus on communicating with honesty from your heart and you let the English mistakes go.
626
You make a pronunciation mistake, let it go.
627
You make a grammar mistake, let it go.
628
Stay focused on communicating from your heart the best you can.
629
When you do that, your communication will be much better.
630
it'll be better than someone who speaks with perfect grammar but they're so worried about mistakes and things that there's no heart,
631
there's no confidence, right?
632
it's a big difference
633
and I think that's about it I think in the last chapter he just says
634
that he just talks about how the people who focus like a champion who do all these things
635
they have the longest success in their careers, right?
636
They have the longest success in...
637
Whoops, I'm trying to switch my camera here.
638
What's going on?
639
Sorry, one second.
640
There we go.
641
So he talks about how in the last chapter that by doing all these things,
642
it will give you the best long-term success, right?
643
You've got to think long-term, not just in this moment, in terms of like, oh, I got to be great today.
644
I got to be great tomorrow, next month.
645
Then you get all worried because you're not improving fast enough.
646
But when you use all these methods and techniques,
647
these champion mindsets, it will create for you long-term success that continues and continues.
648
And in fact, you'll get better and better and better and better.
649
And here's the good thing compared to athletes.
650
Athletes have a big limit with their physical bodies, right?
651
Because our bodies age faster than our brains.
652
And our physical performance will go down much more quickly than our mental performance.
653
So, you know, a top athlete, let's say a soccer player, you know, once they are middle 30s,
654
35, let's say, their ability will go down just because their body can't do what it used to do.
655
Right?
656
That's just the truth.
657
And that's why they all retire usually before they're 40.
658
But with something like speaking English, you don't have that limit.
659
You can continue improving your English when you're 40, when you're 50, when you're 60, when you're 70, when you're 80.
660
Okay, maybe our memory is not quite as sharp as we get older and there are certain things certainly become more challenging.
661
But still, you can see someone like Steve Kaufman who's still learning languages. Is he 80 yet?
662
I'm not sure, but he's definitely in his 70s.
663
So that's the good news with something like English
664
or something like art or there are a lot of things in life where you can continue to improve
665
your entire life, basically.
666
So that's good news, right?
667
Very good news. So that's good.
668
There we go.
669
The Champion's Mind.
670
And that is the end of that book club.
671
So I'll give you a preview of our next book.
672
and I'll give you the correct name so you can buy it if you want.
673
So the next book is How to Slay a Wizard.
674
Wizard, like, you know, magic.
675
And it's by a guy named Owen Benjamin who is an American comedian and writer and podcaster.
676
It's very interesting.
677
Now, what I like about this book, I just finished reading it,
678
And it's kind of the modern new answer to the problems we learned about in Animal Farm,
679
to the problems we learned about in Brave New World, right?
680
And what are those problems is that we live in this, you know, empire of lies and propaganda.
681
And I mean, it's just unbelievable what we're living in now.
682
And it's almost impossible to avoid them.
683
And, you know, we all get tricked.
684
We all get tricked.
685
We're all having to live in that world.
686
I get tricked and then we'll realize, oh, my God, it was another trick.
687
It was another lie.
688
Right.
689
So the problem with those two books when we did those book clubs is that a lot of us,
690
even me, you start to feel a little depressed, right?
691
When you read these books, Brave New World and Animal Farm, 1984 is another one, also by Orwell.
692
that it's a very depressing thing, right?
693
When you realize how much of the modern world is just built on lies
694
and then more lies and then more lies and then more lies
695
and then more lies and all these evil people controlling things and all this terrible stuff.
696
And the question everyone asks, we all want to know is, well, what do we do about it?
697
How do we escape that?
698
And it's actually Owen's answer.
699
I think he has the correct answer.
700
And it's simple, but very powerful.
701
What's great about this book we're going to do is he goes through, first of all, in a more modern way, because this just came out, it's a brand new book.
702
He goes through the tricks and lies of, he calls them the wizards, right?
703
The people who control the governments and big companies and media and all,
704
etc. He calls them wizards.
705
And then he goes through chapter by chapter and he discusses and teaches what are their tricks.
706
How do they trick us?
707
How do they get us to go along with their tricks?
708
How do they make us afraid?
709
And then he shows how do you get out of it?
710
How do you escape it? So it's quite good.
711
This is the kind, that book, How to Slay a Wizard, it's more the kind of book I like.
712
I enjoy more philosophical books.
713
I think a lot of effortless English members are the same because,
714
you know, I've seen my most popular book clubs have been the philosophical books, The Alchemist, which is a very positive book.
715
And Animal Farm and Brave New World.
716
Those are probably my top three book clubs.
717
So it's nice to do things like The Champion's Mind, which are, you know, very practical, but more surface.
718
But I think the more interesting books for me personally, and I know for a lot of you, are these deeper, more philosophical,
719
even really more spiritual books.
720
or we're talking about Animal Farm and Brave New World anti-spiritual.
721
All right.
722
So those will be my next ones.
723
So go get that book if you want to.
724
How to Slay a Wizard by Owen Benjamin will be the next book club.
725
And also get the book we just read if you liked it.
726
The Champion's Mind.
727
And the writer of The Champion's Mind is Jim Afremow.
728
A-F-R-E-M-O-W.
729
Okay, then lots of love to you as always.
730
My book is free.
731
On the screen you'll see EffortlessEnglishClub.com if you're watching on video.
732
You can just go to the website at the bottom of every page.
733
You can put your email.
734
When you do that, I'll send you my book for free.
735
It's the book Effortless English, How to Speak English Like a Native or Learn to Speak English Like a Native, actually.
736
It's the correct title.
737
Okay, lots of love to you.
738
I'll see you next time.
739
Bye for now.
740
Thank you.
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Learn Like a Champion: Boost Your English with Practical Insights
The video dives into "The Champion's Mind," a book about high-performing athletes—and how their strategies apply to mastering skills like English speaking. While the book repeats key ideas, that repetition is a superpower for learning. Just like champions, English learners thrive on consistent practice and revisiting core concepts. Let’s unpack how to apply these lessons, plus get a sneak peek at exciting upcoming book clubs!
Top 5 Phrases to Elevate Your Daily English
- "Stretching to make a book": When a topic is expanded beyond its core ideas (e.g., "The article was stretching to make a point, repeating the same examples.")
- "Deep messages, big ideas": Refers to profound concepts (e.g., "Her speech had deep messages about resilience.")
- "Surface level": Practical but not overly complex (e.g., "This guide is surface level but great for beginners.")
- "Lies and propaganda": Misinformation spread to influence (e.g., "Critical thinking helps spot lies and propaganda.")
- "Solve the problem of": Address a challenge (e.g., "We need to solve the problem of time management.")
Step-by-Step Shadowing Guide for This Video
Shadowing is the ultimate technique to improve English pronunciation and fluency. Here’s how to use it with this video:
- Listen and repeat short clips: Pause after 5-10 seconds, then mimic the speaker’s tone and rhythm. Focus on phrases like "repetition helps us learn" to master natural flow.
- Emphasize key words: The speaker stresses words like "champions," "deep," and "practical." Copy that emphasis to sound more native.
- Use a shadowing site: Platforms with slow-motion playback let you break down tricky parts (e.g., "lies and propaganda" can be challenging—practice it slowly!).
- Connect ideas to your life: After shadowing, say aloud, "I use repetition to improve my English, just like champions!" This links the lesson to your goals.
- Do it daily: Even 5 minutes of shadow speak practice builds confidence. Consistency beats intensity!
Ready to level up? The next book club explores "How to Slay a Wizard," a deep dive into solving life’s big challenges—perfect for pairing with philosophical favorites like Animal Farm. Keep practicing, and remember: every shadowing session brings you closer to speaking like a champion!
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 teaching · I've been working · they've been practicing |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have been · I've seen · have done |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | book which is · English, which is · four, which is |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is called · be stuck · is connected |
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.