Shadowing Practice: When You Keep Replaying the Hurt — A Lesson on Finding Peace - Learn English Speaking with Video
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199 sentences
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Most people carry pain like it is treasure.
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Someone hurts them.
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Someone lies to them.
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Someone breaks a promise.
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And they hold on to it.
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They think about it at night.
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They think about it in the morning.
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They tell the story again and again to anyone who will listen.
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They believe this anger protects them.
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They believe it keeps them safe from being hurt again but it does not protect them.
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It burns them, slowly, quietly, every single day.
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This is the story of a young man named Tomas, who learned this the hard way.
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Tomas lived in a small village near a river.
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He worked at his father's bakery.
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He woke early.
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He baked good bread.
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People liked him.
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He had a kind face, but Tomas had one problem.
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He never let go of anger.
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If someone cheated him at the market, he remembered it for years.
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If a friend forgot his birthday, he brought it up again and again.
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If his brother said something unkind when they were boys, Tomás still spoke of it, even after both of them had grown old enough to have their own children.
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He believed this was normal.
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He believed everyone did this.
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He believed remembering pain made him strong.
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It started small.
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A neighbor named Joran once borrowed flour and never returned it.
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It was a small thing.
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A cup of flour.
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Nothing more.
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But Tomas could not forget it.
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Every time he saw Joran, he felt the same anger rise in his chest.
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He stopped greeting him at the market.
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He stopped waving when Joran passed his window.
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Joran noticed.
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Joran stopped visiting altogether.
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Days turned into weeks.
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Weeks turned into months.
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Tomas added more names to his private list.
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A customer who complained about bread that was actually fine.
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A cousin who did not attend his wedding.
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A friend who once laughed at his cooking, many years ago, as a joke.
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Tomas remembered all of it.
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He carried it everywhere he went.
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He started sleeping badly.
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He would lie in bed and think about the people who wronged him.
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He would imagine what he should have said to them.
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He would build entire arguments in his head, long after the real moments had ended.
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His wife noticed the change.
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You seem far away, she told him one evening.
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I am here, Tomas said, but he was not.
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Part of him was always somewhere else, replaying old pain.
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His bread began to suffer too.
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He would forget the dough on the counter, distracted by an old memory.
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He would burn a batch because his mind was somewhere else, arguing with a man who had insulted him a decade earlier.
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Customers noticed the difference.
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Some stopped coming.
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Tomas did not understand why.
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He only felt more angry, more alone.
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One afternoon, an old woman named Herda came into the bakery.
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She was known in the village for keeping bees.
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Her hands were rough.
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Her back was bent from years of work.
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She bought her usual loaf of bread, but this time she noticed Tomás standing still, staring at nothing, his jaw tight.
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You look tired, she said.
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I am fine, Tomás said quickly.
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Herda studied him for a moment.
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Then she reached into her bag and pulled out a small piece of coal.
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It was black.
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It was cold now, but clearly it had once burned in a fire.
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She placed it in his open hand.
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Hold this, she said.
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Tomas looked at it, confused.
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It's just coal, he said.
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Yes, Herta said, but imagine it is still hot.
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Imagine you picked it up from the fire right now, to throw at someone who hurt you.
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Tomas frowned.
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Why would I do that?
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Hertha smiled, a small, tired smile.
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That is exactly what you are doing.
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Every day, with your anger, Tomas said nothing.
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You want to hurt the people who hurt you, Hertha continued.
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So you pick up the coal.
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You hold it tight.
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You wait for the right moment to throw it at them.
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But while you wait and wait and wait, who is actually getting burned?
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Tomas looked down at the cold coal in his hand.
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You, Herta said simply, you are the one holding it.
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Not Joran, not your cousin.
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Not the man who laughed at your cooking ten years ago.
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You, every single day.
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She took her bread and walked out, leaving Tomas standing alone behind the counter.
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That night, Tomas could not stop thinking about her words.
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He tried to tell himself Herta did not understand.
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He tried to tell himself his anger was different.
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His anger was fair.
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His anger was earned.
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But the image stayed with him, a hot coal, held tight, burning only his own hand.
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The next morning, Taunas tried something new.
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He saw Joran at the market.
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The old anger rose in his chest, familiar and sharp.
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He almost turned away, like always.
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But this time, he stopped.
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He forced himself to nod.
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Joran, surprised, nodded back.
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It felt strange.
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It felt uncomfortable, like putting down something he had held for so long that his hand had forgotten how to open.
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It did not last.
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By the afternoon, Tomas was already replaying the old memory of the flower.
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He felt foolish for nodding at Jorin.
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He told himself Herta's coal was just an old woman's story.
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Nothing more.
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He picked the anger back up, the way a person picks up a familiar heavy bag.
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Weeks passed.
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Tomás tried again.
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And failed again.
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He would let go of one old grudge.
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Only to grab it back a few days later, when a small comment reminded him of the pain.
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Old habits do not disappear in one night.
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They pull you back, again and again, like a rope tied around your chest.
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But slowly, something began to shift.
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One evening, lying awake, replaying an old argument in his mind for the hundredth time, Tomás suddenly felt his own hand,
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tight and tense, as if it were truly holding something hot.
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He opened his fingers, slowly, in the dark.
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There was nothing there, only air, but his hand had been closed all this time, for years.
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That night, Tomás made a quiet decision.
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No speech, no big promise to himself.
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Just one small choice.
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Tomorrow, when the old anger comes, I will notice it.
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I will see it as a hot coal, and I will choose whether to hold it or put it down.
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It was not easy.
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Some days, the coal felt too tempting to drop.
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Some days, he held onto it for hours before he remembered heard his words, but little by little, he practiced letting go.
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He greeted Joran properly.
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He visited his cousin, without mentioning the wedding.
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He laughed, truly laughed.
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When someone brought up his old cooking mistake, instead of feeling his old shame rise up like fire, his wife noticed first.
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You seem here again, she said one evening.
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Tomas smiled.
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I am trying to stay here, he said.
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His bread improved too.
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His hands were steadier.
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His mind was quieter.
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Customers who had drifted away slowly began coming back, drawn by warm bread and a baker who finally looked present,
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instead of somewhere far away, arguing with ghosts.
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Then, one autumn, a real test came.
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A trader from another town accused Tomás publicly at the market of selling bad grain.
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It was not true.
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Tomás had done nothing wrong, but the trader was loud.
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Other people started to listen.
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Old Tomas would have carried this insult for years.
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He would have hated this traitor forever, replaying the moment a thousand times in his mind.
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Instead, Tomas felt the old fire rise in his chest, familiar and sharp.
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He felt his hand close, as if reaching for the coal.
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He paused.
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He took a breath.
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He calmly explained the truth about his grain, showed the trader proof, and let the matter end right there in the market.
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Instead of carrying it home with him like a stone in his pocket, the trader, embarrassed, apologized quietly the next day.
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Thomas simply nodded and moved on.
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No anger, no coal in his hand.
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Years passed, Thomas grew older.
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His bakery became known, not just for good bread, but for the calm, steady man who ran it.
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Young people in the village, when they were angry, sometimes came to him for advice, without fully knowing why.
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One day, a young boy came to the bakery, furious after a fight with his best friend.
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He wanted revenge.
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He wanted to hurt his friend back, the way he had been hurt.
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Tomas listened.
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Then he walked to a small shelf behind the counter, where an old piece of coal sat, cold and black, wrapped gently in cloth.
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He placed it in the boy's hand.
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Hold this, Tomas said, and imagine it is still hot.
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Now let me share my own thought with you for a moment.
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I think many of us are walking around holding our own piece of coal.
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Maybe it is a friend who hurt you years ago.
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Maybe it is a parent who said something cruel.
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Maybe it is a job that let you go, unfairly, and you still think about it every single day.
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We hold on, thinking we are protecting ourselves, thinking we are being strong, thinking we are somehow punishing the person who hurt us.
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But they are not the ones getting burned.
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You are.
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While you hold on to that anger, they are living their life.
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Maybe they have already forgotten.
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Maybe they never think about it at all.
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And you are still awake at night, holding a coal that only burns your own hand.
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So here is one simple thing you can do today.
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Think of one person.
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One old anger you still carry.
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Just one.
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And for a moment, imagine it as a hot coal in your hand.
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Ask yourself honestly, am I still holding this to protect myself?
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Or am I just letting myself get burned, again and again, for no reason at all?
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You do not have to forgive everyone today.
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You do not have to forget what happened.
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But you can choose, just for today, to open your hand a little, to put the coal down even for a moment,
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and feel what it is like to simply rest.
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If this story touched your heart
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or gave you a new way to think about how holding on to anger is like carrying a hot coal,
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then subscribe to the channel and join this journey of meaningful stories with powerful life lessons.
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And before you go, watch the previous story on the screen.
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I believe that story can help you just as much as today's one.
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I'll see you there.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “When You Keep Replaying the Hurt — A Lesson on Finding Peace”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: Tomas, coal, anger, Joran, hurt. This video has 199 sentences and 1807 words to shadow. The speech runs for 11:41. The speaker talks at a natural 155 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 86% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| bakery noun | /ˈbeɪ.kə.ɹi/ | A place in which bread (and often other baked goods such as cakes) is baked and/or sold. |
| trader noun | /ˈtɹeɪdɚ/ | One who earns a living by trading goods or securities. |
| replay noun | /ˈɹiːpleɪ/ | An act or instance of replaying (of playing something, such as a game, again); a replaying of (something). |
| nod verb | /nɑd/ | To incline the head up and down, as to indicate agreement. |
| greet verb | /ɡɹiːt/ | To welcome in a friendly manner, either in person or through another means such as writing. |
| insult noun | /ɪnˈsʌlt/ | Action or form of speech deliberately intended to be rude; (countable) a particular act or statement having this effect. |
| flour noun | /ˈflaʊ.ə/ | Powder obtained by grinding or milling cereal grains, especially wheat, or other foodstuffs such as soybeans and potatoes, and used to bake bread, cakes, and… |
| awake verb | /əˈweɪk/ | To become conscious after having slept. |
| quietly adverb | /ˈkwaɪ.ɪt.li/ | Producing little or no noise. |
| grain noun | /ɡɹeɪn/ | The harvested seeds of various grass food crops, especially wheat, maize, rye, barley, and rice. |
| grudge noun | /ɡɹʌd͡ʒ/ | Deep-seated and/or long-term animosity or ill will about something or someone, especially due to perceived mistreatment. |
| hundredth adjective | /ˈhʌndɹə(d)θ/ | The ordinal form of the number one hundred. |
| unfairly adverb | In a manner that is unfair. | |
| unkind adjective | /ʌnˈkaɪnd/ | Lacking kindness, sympathy, benevolence, gratitude, or similar; cruel, harsh or unjust; ungrateful. |
| calmly adverb | /ˈkɑː(ɹ)m.li/ | In a calm manner; coolly. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| pick up verb | To lift; to grasp and raise. |
| back up verb | To move backwards, especially for a vehicle to do so. |
| bring up verb | To mention. |
| come back verb | To return to a place. |
| pull out verb | To withdraw; especially of military forces; to retreat. |
| put down verb | To insult, belittle, or demean. |
| turn away verb | To rotate so as not to face someone or something. |
| walk around verb | To walk with no planned destination; to meander. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | anyone who will · friend who once · people who wronged |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | being hurt · was known · was bent |
Pronunciation to watch
- The “th” sounds: hundredth /ˈhʌndɹə(d)θ/, cloth /klɒθ/, altogether /ɔl.tuˈɡɛð.ɚ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: foolish /ˈfuː.lɪʃ/, punish /ˈpʌnɪʃ/, shelf /ʃɛlf/, treasure /ˈtɹɛʒəɹ/
- Long words — get the stress right: altogether /ɔl.tuˈɡɛð.ɚ/, apologize /əˈpɑləˌd͡ʒaɪz/, uncomfortable /ʌnˈkʌm.fɚ.tə.bl̩/
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 bakery, trader, replay.
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.