Shadowing Practice: This Video Will Find You When You Need It The Most - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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You're dreaming big and doing absolutely nothing about it.
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You've had this same idea for two years, maybe three years, a great dream for your career, your business, your relationships, wealth maybe,
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but you haven't started yet.
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Why?
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What's getting in the way?
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That's what we want to cover.
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There are three traps.
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I've had this dream for over five years.
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Never got started on it until last year and it was to start this very YouTube channel.
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And when I finally did it, All I could think of was Man, I should have done it much sooner.
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In the last eight months, we've added 1 .2 million subscribers.
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For every second that this channel has been alive, roughly about 45 million seconds, someone somewhere has watched the video.
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The love and the warmth that I continue to receive every day is just overwhelming.
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It's so hard to describe.
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Just impossible.
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That's our case study.
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And through that, we will build a systematic process
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that helps you define those three traps and gets you out of all three of them.
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The third one took me 20 years to figure out.
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And this video I thought would be different.
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It's raw, it's no animations, no effects, just unplugged.
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Because we're talking about the YouTube channel itself, I thought it should be just you and me.
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And I had the cameras on and I have some bullet points in front of me, but it's just going to be a conversation.
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So let's get going.
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I think the first trap is the hardest to escape, at least for me.
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We don't bet on ourselves.
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Our ambition is not a problem.
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I think the real problem is how we see ourselves.
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I'm not worthy, I don't deserve it, Who's going to care?
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You would rather take a chance on anyone but yourself.
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That's been My story all my life.
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In fact, the genesis of this very channel will tell you all about how that narrative has been trapping all of us.
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I was a young kid, a teenager, and I ran away from home for a while and I became a monk in training.
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swept the courtyards and cleaned the toilets and ate one meal a day from a bull, all of that.
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And somehow, Over time, I managed to become a musician and ended up going to MIT,
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worked on Wall Street, eventually became a CEO, board member, investor, all of that.
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But all throughout that journey, At every phase, the voice that has always kept repeating in my head has been saying,
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What am I doing here?
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I don't belong here.
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I'm not supposed to be here. And
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Eventually, I got very lucky and I had two big exits
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and I was in tech so I got to retire about three years ago,
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but even after that, This idea that I don't deserve it has never left me.
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I don't know, it must be my chemistry or something.
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When I thought, oh, I should start something creative.
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I should start a YouTube channel.
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Because I saw my eight -year -old being completely fearless in starting his channel.
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And I thought, Well, if he could do it, I can do it too.
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But I was still so afraid. about going it alone.
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So I went back to my old band members One by one, I asked all of them to see if they would do it with me.
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If we could start the band together and then the YouTube channel will be about music.
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And in that band, I was the drummer.
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So, I was never used to being in the center.
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I was only comfortable on
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being on the side or at the back
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and unfortunately they were all busy with their own lives and their own dreams so Nothing came of it.
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And I remember feeling so down about it.
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And one late evening I was flying from London to New York and this
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thought suddenly hit me that I was just hiding behind them.
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I've been doing that all my life.
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I always wanted a partner, a co -founder, I had never bet on myself.
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And that's where I decided to just
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talk about personal growth professional growth
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ai careers finance relationships insights that the 22 year old version of me needed so desperately but never got.
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So that's how this channel came about.
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So I went ahead and I hired an agency,
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a team to help me edit and manage this whole YouTube channel and the process.
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And I remember them asking me, hey, what do you want to call it?
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And I said, listen, you can call it whatever you want.
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as long as it's not my own name still hiding so we found a brand name some of you
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may remember that this channel's original name was the MIT Monk.
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And I love that name.
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two contrasting ideas, and I had been both.
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However, I remember...
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heaving a sigh of relief when we found the name.
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And the first thought that came to my mind was, Great.
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This is all about this thing called MIT Monk this avatar
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I don't have to be
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me i don't have to bet on myself
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so anyway the first video gets released in february of 2025
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the long form video for the first eight months after that so until october november of 2025
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crickets very few people watched what I was producing, even fewer subscribers.
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And you know, I was kind of relieved.
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I wasn't surprised either because, you know, there are 140 million videos uploaded on YouTube every week. And...
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You know, mine was one of them.
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lost in the same void.
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Fortunately, I did not need to make money off of this channel.
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So, I kept showing up every week, week after week.
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And I remember we crossed About 50 ,000 subscribers in late October of 2025. And...
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I still heard the same voice.
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Why will anyone care what I have to say.
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So I remember I was on a Zoom call with the agency CEO and the creative director.
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And I asked them, you know,
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it's October and we're at 50 ,000 subscribers or so When do you think we'll cross 100 ,000.
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subscribers and they looked at each other and said You know, at this rate, it will take you...
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at least a year. or more. So...
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October of 2026, maybe.
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And that's when we will cross 100 ,000 subscribers.
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And I was delighted.
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I was happy.
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with that expert forecast.
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But then something surprising started happening in November.
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And I remember it was like November 1st or something like that just water break
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Because we crossed 100 ,000 subscribers in literally two weeks after that Zoom call.
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Whatever was supposed to take a year, we crossed it in two weeks.
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And in eight months since November, we added 1 .2 million subscribers.
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And the growth keeps accelerating.
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I kid you not, I don't really know why that happened.
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I don't really know why it's happening.
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I have some theories about it, but...
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YouTube algorithm is an algorithm of attention.
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So why do millions of people viewers like you,
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decide to give their time and their attention and their love to someone like me
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is a total mystery box that I can't solve.
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All I can do is feel this immense gratitude that we get to spend time together.
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And this thing keeps growing.
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every day but then uh came one more twist as we were crossing that million subscriber milestone in
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April or May of 2026, MIT called.
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And they were Like, very nice.
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You know, they were gentle.
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They said, "Hey, you know, We love the fact that you're doing this.
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It's very nice.
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The content is very good.
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But we're gonna have to ask you, dude, take down MIT from the brand name that you're using,
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because people Todd that there was an actual monk that worked at MIT as a faculty member.
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So of course, I said yes, because I am an alum.
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My team started scrambling for another brand name, I have this chief of staff of mine and I've worked with her for years.
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She's known me for years.
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And she asked me to get on a live Zoom call.
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and she literally shared her desktop screen on Zoom and looked me in the eye and said,
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I'm gonna change the name right now.
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And before I could say anything,
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she added my real name on the YouTube channel homepage, the MIT monk became Sandeep Swadia and it felt so uncomfortable.
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for me to see that name.
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I just wanted to keep hiding.
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Now, I've been to the absolute bottom and I've been to the top.
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I've been very fortunate.
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I'm not scared of losing.
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But standing up in the spotlight all by yourself and then accepting that you can deserve to be there,
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That's super hard.
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And researchers have looked at hundreds of studies on this.
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Only about half the people who intend to do something, who intend to follow their dreams, End up doing it.
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It's a coin flip.
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So it's never about how badly you want it.
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doing is way harder than dreaming.
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we get in our own way.
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So what do you do? this Monday morning.
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First, you have to realize that you are waiting for your own permission that will never come.
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And second, start with the smallest of the small bet that you can make.
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Just the first step.
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Take it.
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Because This is what you will tell me later, I guarantee it.
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You'll say: I should have started it much sooner.
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It doesn't matter if...
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No one else cares.
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if you care about it deeply.
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Isn't that a great reason enough to get started?
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Here's Another example, I love going deeper.
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And so I started writing a newsletter, I think two months ago.
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Every Tuesday, it comes out and one insight, one tool, one practice.
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that you can use every day.
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And you can subscribe to it if you'd like.
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But it's something I I love to do.
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That's a reason enough.
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It's free.
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Link is below, but.
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Let's talk about the second trap now.
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And that is Thank you.
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Subtle. and trickier.
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And I hear about it from thousands of inbound messages.
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The question is, why start anything?
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in the age of AI.
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The machines can do it better than me and faster than me.
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Some of it is partly true and It feels like you lost before you even started.
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But I think as AI gets smarter at intelligence,
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our human judgment is going to be more and more valuable.
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Let me give you two examples.
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two stories.
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One about creation and one about communication.
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Both stories are coming from building this YouTube channel because that's our case study.
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But the activity doesn't matter.
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The principles will apply to anything you want to build in the age of AI.
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So for every week, I think about what I ate.
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what the topics are going to be, what I want to talk about and I write.
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Descript every week.
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And that's the biggest challenge.
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Because there's so much AI slop on YouTube, as you know, on any social media platform nowadays.
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And building something original seems almost because AI by default,
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wants you to talk like everybody else that's how ai learned to talk anyway because it was trained on the content
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that existed on the internet creating something truly original takes to human faculties that aren't supposed to get along well.
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Your hot -blooded emotions and your cold -blooded craft.
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They fight each other all the time.
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Because when you focus on your emotions and your intuition and your imagination, you lose sight of the discipline to focus on...
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the details of grammar and structure and verification of the research and all of that stuff.
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And on the other hand, when you focus on the craft and the details and the structures, that you want to neatly construct something,
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you lose that spark, that intuition, that that human -ness of it.
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There is a great Indian poet and I love him, I admire his work.
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His name is Javed Akhtar and he says it brilliantly,
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that It is this very contradiction that makes our output human, that makes our output poetic.
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It gives it the unique fingerprint.
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that is yours.
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Here's the thing, the cold half, you know, the craft half, and the structure and an idea, all of that.
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A machine can do that now Instantly and free and better than you and faster than you.
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What it cannot do is the other half.
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That's your imagination, your intuition.
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your judgment.
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And working through this contradiction of emotion and craft is always going to be extremely frustrating.
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It is annoying for me because every week I spend hours and hours and hours trying to find something that is
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worth putting in front of you so that I don't waste your time.
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And every time it feels like It's not going to work this week.
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It's not going to happen.
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And I'm not going to make it.
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and but somehow every week it works out.
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And AI can be an expert at deep research, so I use it.
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It can be a very good thinking partner.
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There are lots of advantages, but I've never once seen something that I could just copy.
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- Yes.
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and reuse on this channel.
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Not even once.
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Maybe it'll get better over time.
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Nobody knows.
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But your judgment and your taste and your ability to struggle through this contradiction that we're talking about,
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that can still help you avoid the trap and create something beautiful.
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something that is entirely yours, something that is entirely you.
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That's the first principle.
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And the second principle is equally tricky
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because we tend to start believing in the so -called experts when we're starting on our dream.
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But they just hand us playbooks that worked for others that may or may not work for you
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Here is what I learned.
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When I started this channel, It wasn't working out in the beginning, you know, we weren't getting the traction.
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So I would speak to a bunch of YouTube experts who would tell me
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a long list of things that I needed to fix.
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You have to speak very fast.
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You have to be animated.
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You gotta amp it up.
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Why aren't you saying please subscribe three times?
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It should be in the beginning, in the middle, at the end.
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You have to keep hammering it.
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Your videos are too long keep them under 12 minutes 10
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minutes do more shorts tuesday at 10 am is the best
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time to release your videos you need to use a whiteboard you need to create a classroom vibe
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and on and on and on and actually if you see my earlier videos,
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maybe the first two or three or four months,
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I am desperately trying to amp it up and looked like I was so excited.
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I talked like this all the time, throughout all the videos.
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I don't know why, but eventually, I couldn't recognize. who that person was.
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I was following the advice of people who didn't know me.
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- Yes.
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They had a playbook.
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and it was a great playbook.
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But you know, following a standard operating process will only make you a standard operating product just like everyone else.
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So after a few months, I stopped performing and talking fast and projecting.
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I just started having a conversation in a normal way that We all usually talk.
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Now did any of that change have anything to do with the eight -month explosion that we've had Maybe...
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We'll never know for sure.
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Maybe not.
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But I do know that the viewers you know, and vicious folks like you.
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Connect with this content at a very different level at a different scale,
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at a very different emotional depth.
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So, what's the action item here?
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Everyone will come to you with their playbook on what works when you start on your dream.
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They mean well.
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but they don't know.
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So learn from them, but then make your own playbook.
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Here's an interesting proof point.
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You know, the experts told me that I should Say subscribe, please subscribe and like at the end of every video.
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Someone said, oh, you have to have a...
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a cool signature line or gesture at the end of the video,
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like a wave or a salute or "See you on the other side, adios." something cool.
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And I struggled to come up with it, but couldn't. And Okay.
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I remember maybe...
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Thank you around fourth or fifth of our videos that i was recording I accidentally blurred out I love you all.
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And if you find that video on the channel,
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you'll see that it's an accident and this stuff comes out of my mouth and I look a bit awkward because
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It wasn't planned.
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And the agency team, when they were editing it, asked me if we should take it out.
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And I I somehow felt that It was a very genuine moment.
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So we kept it and became our signature line.
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Now, No playbook.
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and no expert would have given me that line.
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no AI would have written it because it wasn't about conscious craft.
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It came from that inner part of being human.
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You'll never outrun AI on speed or stamina or smarts.
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What's scarce now? is that very human part that we're talking about.
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your judgment, your taste your genuine authenticity, your emotions.
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That's how you avoid that second trap of commoditization.
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So, okay, you bet on yourself, You got started.
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You figured out how to stand out from the crowd.
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What's the third trap?
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Let's go there next.
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The problem is that we spend our whole life becoming good at one thing.
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I'm a lawyer, I'm an engineer, I'm a founder, I'm a marketer, I'm an HR expert I'm a leader.
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I'm the CEO.
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You're not one thing.
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you'll have things in your life that don't fit together.
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Those parts feel like misfits a flaw in your resume but Here's the thing that I learned.
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If you Look at a guitar.
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I have a guitar.
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It has six strings.
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Let's see.
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Here it is.
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And these six strings have different thickness.
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different tension.
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Each one is tuned to a different note.
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Now, if you strum them open, It's just noise.
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It doesn't sound musical, Unless it sounds physical to you.
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Most people will say, "hmm, what is that?" But if you learn to press at certain points,
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Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Sounds gorgeous, right?
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Now, I play guitar like a drummer would play guitar.
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These are called Cowboy Accords, anyone can learn them.
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But The point is, Each string resonates with the other,
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and that's how harmony is produced.
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And therein lies the trap and the solution.
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If you bring just one string, to your dream and to your work, and leave the rest of them at home,
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then you'll wonder why You're not able to make a song.
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Why it's not working?
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Why the music?
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doesn't come out.
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Because our identities are kind of like that too.
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Each one may not seem connected.
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Me on Wall Street has nothing to do with me, the creator.
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here and me from the monk training era has nothing to do with me, the board member.
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But somehow, they all resonate with each other at a deeper level.
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just like that guitar.
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So you may not feel like you're absolutely amazing at anything, maybe you're above average at best at a handful of things, but that's the magic.
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Somehow, when you put all of that together in a certain way, and you know where to press,
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it gives rise to a different type of harmony.
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Why a different type?
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Because that combination doesn't exist anywhere else.
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That's yours.
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So, you have to keep experimenting.
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with how you play with all these gifts that you have together.
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playing a guitar.
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And there's no right or wrong way of playing it.
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I'm not a great player.
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but I love playing it.
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There's only your way.
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And so, You have to see everything as if it's an experiment.
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This video is a total experiment.
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Normally, my team would pour in so much love
341
and effort into cuts and edits and A -roll and B -roll and animation and all of that production.
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every small detail matters to them, matters to us, matters to me.
343
But today we thought, you know,
344
this is about the YouTube channel and is Genesis so we got rid of every single layer.
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Now Do we know that it's going to work?
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We don't know.
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If it works, We'll do it again we'll make some more.
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If it doesn't, we'll try something else.
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This channel is just a lab.
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Every week we run an experiment and we find out what actually resonates with you.
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What you find valuable.
352
Life's kind of like that too.
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So here's what you do Monday morning.
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don't kill yourself trying to be one clean thing.
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You are too many things. which is...
356
where the beauty is.
357
Look at areas in your life that don't fit.
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and find a way to bring all of it to your dreams.
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Because Turning a massive dream into something real doesn't take a sudden cinematic explosion of talent.
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It takes a a systematic process with the three parts that we talked about.
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1. Bet on yourself.
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and please get started.
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Two, rely on your human judgment.
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and three Never stop experimenting.
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And through that process, you will change the shape of your dream.
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N.
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that dream will change the shape of you.
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And that, interactive chain reaction will never stop once you start.
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So remember to start tonight what you've been putting off for years.
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And remember, A note you never play cannot become a song.
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And as I always say, thank you.
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And I love you.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “This Video Will Find You When You Need It The Most”. This video has 372 sentences and 3660 words to shadow. The speech runs for 29:38. The speaker talks at a steady 124 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| subscriber noun | /səbˈskɹaɪbɚ/ | A person who subscribes to a publication or a service. |
| playbook noun | /ˈpleɪ.bʊk/ | A book containing the text of a play or plays. |
| monk noun | /mʌŋk/ | A male member of a monastic order who has devoted his life for religious service. |
| subscribe verb | /səbˈskɹaɪb/ | To write (one’s name) at the bottom of a document; to sign (one's name). |
| emotion noun | /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/ | A person's internal state of being and involuntary physiological response to an object or a situation, based on or tied to physical state and sensory data. |
| contradiction noun | /ˌkɑːntɹəˈdɪkʃən/ | The act of contradicting. |
| resonate verb | /ˈɹɛz.əˌneɪt/ | To vibrate or sound, especially in response to another vibration. |
| intuition noun | /ˌɪn.tjuːˈɪʃ.ən/ | Immediate cognition without the use of conscious rational processes. |
| drummer noun | /ˈdɹʌmɚ/ | One who plays the drums. |
| viewer noun | /ˈvju.ɚ/ | Someone who views a spectacle; an onlooker or spectator. |
| genesis noun | /ˈd͡ʒɛn.ə.sɪs/ | The origin, start, or point at which something comes into being. |
| systematic adjective | /ˌsɪs.tɪˈmæt.ɪk/ | Carried out according to a planned, ordered procedure. |
| tricky adjective | /ˈtɹɪk.i/ | Hard to deal with, complicated. |
| desperately adverb | /ˈdɛs.p(ə.)ɹət.li/ | In a desperate manner; without regard to danger or safety; recklessly. |
| algorithm noun | /ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/ | A collection of ordered steps that solve a mathematical problem. A precise step-by-step plan for a computational procedure that possibly begins with an input… |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. | |
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. | |
| come up with verb | To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it. | |
| find out verb | To discover, as by asking or investigating. | |
| fit together verb | To put the appropriate parts of (something) into a whole; to combine pieces that go together to create a finished object. | |
| get along verb | To interact or coexist well, without argument or trouble. | |
| go ahead verb | /ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/ | To proceed with; to begin. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- You're dreaming big and doing absolutely nothing about it.
- What's getting in the way?
- That's what we want to cover.
- What am I doing here?
- Why aren't you saying please subscribe three times?
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 | has been trapping · has been saying · I've been doing |
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | If it works, We'll do · If it doesn't, we'll try |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | You've had · haven't started · I've had |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was trained · is Javed · be animated |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 88 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, I'm, doesn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: algorithm /ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/, therein /ˈðɛəɹˈɪn/, authenticity /ɑθɛnˈtɪsɪti/, thickness /ˈθɪknəs/, warmth /wɔɹmθ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, contradiction /ˌkɑːntɹəˈdɪkʃən/, intuition /ˌɪn.tjuːˈɪʃ.ən/, animation /ˌæn.ɪˈmeɪ.ʃən/, commoditization /kəˌmɑdətɪˈzeɪ̯ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: contradiction /ˌkɑːntɹəˈdɪkʃən/, intuition /ˌɪn.tjuːˈɪʃ.ən/, systematic /ˌsɪs.tɪˈmæt.ɪk/, desperately /ˈdɛs.p(ə.)ɹət.li/, animation /ˌæn.ɪˈmeɪ.ʃən/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like subscriber, playbook, monk.
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.