Shadowing Practice: What Happens When You Stop Making It About You | Pema Chödrön - Learn English Speaking with Video
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adapt to circumstances so your full potential could come forward.
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Yeah.
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And I thought that's what people want.
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That's what they want.
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They want their full potential to come forward and they see that there are these circumstances.
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What do you have to say about that that would be helpful to people who have that longing?
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For their full potential?
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Yeah.
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Well, the main thing, right, is to get out of your own way, right?
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Do you have a sense that you came into this life with a certain promise of some kind,
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maybe a commitment to the lineage that you're now a part of?
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And did you fulfill that promise?
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Do you have a sense of, I fulfilled my promise?
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And if so, what was that promise you fulfilled?
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Well, you know, I do have that sense.
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I've actually never discussed it with my teachers.
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It'd be interesting to do that.
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But I've had that throughout my life actually, you know, that sense of you're saying fulfill a mission.
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That sounds kind of rings true.
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And what the mission is, you're not quite sure, but you know that it's it's like,
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can you can you can you work in this actually quite painful realm of the human realm,
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you know, and what can you do here for yourself, for others and so forth?
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I have always had that kind of feeling as long as I can remember.
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And but now at my age, I'm really hesitant to.
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I don't know.
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I don't want to concretize it, I don't want to reify it, I don't want to make it something, you know.
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But yeah, I would definitely feel like I had fulfilled the mission.
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Whatever that mission was or is, you know, I would definitely feel like, wow, you know, you can talk about in terms of good karma, you know.
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Wow, you know, to meet the teachers I've met, to receive the instruction I've had, to just have the supportive circumstances I've had.
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Incredible, you know, just incredible.
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Well, and all the tremendous work you've done to be of service and help people and bring wisdom teachings to people.
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Tremendous.
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Well, you see, that's the thing is that that's never been intentional.
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It's never been intentional.
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You know, even though I'm saying that this mission thing has always been real to me, it's been more like how do you kind of adapt to circumstances
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so that your full potential can manifest rather than an intention to help people or to wake up or anything.
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Honestly, it's sort of just, well, waking up, I would say, yeah, that has been an intention to want to wake up.
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But the fact that there's been all these books and all of this happening,
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that feels unreal a lot of the times and very much like just some kind of incredible good karma.
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And then what you do with good karma is you don't waste it, you know, pay it back.
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You pay it back, you pay it back, you get a lot of joy in paying it back.
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And as they say with generosity, you know, if you want to be rich, give everything, keep giving, you know.
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And so it is with awakening too, you know, I think if you want to awaken,
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you just keep letting go and letting go and putting others in front of yourselves and whatever it is.
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You said a very powerful thing, adapt to circumstances so your full potential could come forward.
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And I thought that's what people want.
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That's what they want.
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They want their full potential to come forward and they see that there are these circumstances.
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What do you have to say about that that would be helpful to people who have that longing?
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For their full potential?
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Well, the main thing right is to get out of your
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own way right to kind of let go of your agendas
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to you know in in buddhism it's referred to as ego clinging
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or you know uh self self-importance self-referencing all the time and
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so it's kind of hard you know when you
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when you want to do that uh at
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and to do it without um you know it being all about me that's pretty subtle right yeah
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But that's the only way it can happen.
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The more you get out of the way, it's like, let's just say it's like,
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well, Trungpa Rishi used the analogy of a cocoon for this predicament of it's always all about me.
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And then he describes in his teachings, the Shambhala teachings, how there's a little slit and then you see, oh my goodness, you know,
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there's all that space, there's all that sky out there, fresh air, and you get drawn to it.
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But the minute you, it's like anything about, oh, it's mine, I want it, oh, people will really admire me for this,
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then you're right back into the cocoon again.
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The cocoon is kind of made up of that and what you're drawn to, the infinite, has nothing to do with anybody.
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There's no personality and if there's no you know no ego in it at all.
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So again that's that's a big ask.
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But all this thing we were talking about earlier about working with what's painful in life,
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the groundlessness, the uncertainty, the insecurity,
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what that feels like and completely extending tenderness to that feeling like I was talking about earlier without the spin-off,
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that is not an ego thing.
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That's a kind of ego burning, if you're like burning up the mechanism, or I don't want to get too fancy with the metaphors,
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but it's like a burning up that which is getting in the way of our full potential.
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So that's interesting because full potential doesn't have anything to do with the small self, you know.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “What Happens When You Stop Making It About You”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: potential, circumstances, mission, ego, promise. This video has 74 sentences and 982 words to shadow. The speech runs for 6:27. The speaker talks at a natural 152 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 88% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| circumstance noun | /ˈsɝ.kəmˌstæns/ | Something which is related to, or in some way affects, a fact or event. |
| fulfill verb | /fʊlˈfɪl/ | To satisfy, carry out, bring to completion (an obligation, a requirement, etc.). |
| cocoon noun | /kəˈkuːn/ | The silky case spun by the larvae of some insects in which they metamorphose, protecting the pupa within. |
| karma noun | /kərm(ə)/ | The sum total of a person's actions, which determine the person's next incarnation in samsara, the cycle of death and rebirth. |
| adapt verb | /əˈdæpt/ | To make suitable; to make to correspond; to fit or suit. |
| awaken verb | /əˈweɪkən/ | To cause to become awake. |
| intentional adjective | /ɪnˈtɛnʃənəl/ | Intended or planned; done deliberately or voluntarily. |
| tremendous adjective | /tɹɪˈmɛndəs/ | Awe-inspiring; terrific. |
| concretize verb | To make concrete, substantial, real, or tangible; to represent or embody a concept through a particular instance or example. | |
| groundlessness noun | The state or condition of being groundless. | |
| hesitant adjective | /ˈhɛzɪtənt/ | Tending to hesitate, wait, or proceed with caution or reservation. |
| lineage noun | /ˈlɪn.i.ɪd͡ʒ/ | Descent in a line from a common progenitor; progeny; descending line of offspring or ascending line of parentage. |
| predicament noun | /pɹɪˈdɪkəmənt/ | A definite class, state or condition. |
| tenderness noun | /ˈtɛn.dɚ.nɪs/ | Quality, state or condition of being tender. |
| insecurity noun | A lack of security; uncertainty. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| come forward verb | To offer help or information, especially about a crime. | |
| get out of verb | To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of. | |
| wake up verb | /ˌweɪk ˈʌp/ | To stop sleeping; to awake. |
| burn up verb | To catch fire and burn until destroyed. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've actually never discussed · I've had · have always had |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who have · that which is |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 22 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, you're, I've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- Long words — get the stress right: intentional /ɪnˈtɛnʃənəl/, predicament /pɹɪˈdɪkəmənt/, generosity /ˌd͡ʒɛn.əˈɹɑ.sə.ti/, analogy /əˈnæləd͡ʒi/, uncertainty /ʌnˈsɜːtənti/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like circumstance, fulfill, cocoon.
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.