Shadowing Practice: Why Are So Many People Finding Stoicism in Our Modern Day? - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Having the emotion, to me, is different than acting on the emotion.
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Aha.
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Lincoln famously would get upset, as all leaders do.
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And he would write these letters, but then he would put the letters in a drawer and not send them.
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Right?
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You can be angry.
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You don't have to hit send.
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So 15 books you've written about this.
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What is stoicism, and how do you explain it?
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Well, I think the stereotype you mentioned is a good place to start.
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People think stoic means has no emotions, invulnerable.
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That's what we would call lowercase stoic.
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That's what the word means.
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And it was just like Epicurean means loves food, but it's actually also a 2 ,500 -year -old ancient philosophy.
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And so I sort of define stoicism as this idea that we don't control what happens, but we control how we respond to what happens.
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And the Stoics believed that everything was an opportunity to practice virtue.
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And those four virtues for the Stoics were courage, temperance or self -discipline, justice, and wisdom.
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And so the idea is that life can throw a lot at you, but it can't prevent you from acting with virtue.
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That's something you could do in prison.
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You could also do as the emperor of Rome.
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And so Stoicism then is this sort of toolkit for dealing with a world where the vast majority...
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So it's not a religion.
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I don't think so.
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It's a way of living.
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And there have been the Stoics lived in a world of the gods and there have been Stoics since, you know, God.
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It's, I think, perfectly compatible with a variety of different faiths, but it's mostly a way of living, a set of ideas.
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Now, when I read Obstacle is the Way, I was struck by how simple the idea is
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And yet how radical it also becomes when you actually try to live it, that the very thing, y 'all,
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blocking your path might actually be the path.
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So Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome around the year 170, wrote, what stands in the way becomes the way.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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And I had not come across that as a philosophy.
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How does what's standing in the way become the way, Ryan?
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I think what he's specifically talking about makes it very clear.
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So the obstacle he's referring to, because he's writing in meditations, which is just his private thoughts.
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So he's not saying it to us.
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He's saying it to himself.
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And he's talking about difficult and annoying people.
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He's saying difficult and annoying people can get in our way.
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They can cause problems for us, right?
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Our opponents, our competitors, anyone can cause problems for us but they can't prevent us from moving forward
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because they're actually presenting us a new way to move forward, whether it's patience, whether it's forgiveness, whether it's creativity or perseverance.
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So for the Stoics, when they say the obstacle is the way, sometimes you can transform what you're dealing with into some huge opportunity to move forward in a professional capacity.
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But always in a personal capacity,
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we're being challenged and tested we're given an opportunity to practice some kind of excellence,
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some reach for us that maybe we wouldn't have done under ordinary circumstances, but this circumstance we're in gives us the chance to do that.
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That's what he means.
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So you write about persistent, directed action, and you say action is the solution and cure to our predicaments.
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How do people take action when they're stuck, when they don't know what to do.
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Most people don't take action because they're stuck.
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One of the Stoic philosophers, Seneca, he said that the one thing all fools have in common is that they're always getting ready to start.
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So we say we're going to do it later.
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We say we're going to do it tomorrow.
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We say we're going to do it when things go back to normal.
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All fools have this in common.
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I was thinking, okay, I'm in that fool category.
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Me too.
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I'm getting ready.
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I'm getting ready.
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Yeah, we're working ourselves up to it.
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Yeah.
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And really we gotta get started.
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We gotta, what's the smallest thing?
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What's the next right thing that we can do?
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Yeah.
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One of my favorite writing rules is just a couple crappy pages a day.
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Yeah.
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You know, just get started.
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Don't overthink it.
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Don't let perfection be a form of paralysis.
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Yeah.
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But what can you do right now that at least makes a small positive difference?
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Yeah, so even if you're tired, even if you're discouraged, you still take action no matter what.
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Well, that's what discipline is, right?
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Doing it when you don't want to do it
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or you don't have to do it or you have a good excuse to not do it.
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Yeah.
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Well, one of the sentences, the first sentences that stood out for me is, it doesn't matter what happens to us.
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It can be for the best if we use it to be better for ourselves and others.
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I think that's true.
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Sounds crazy, but also really challenging to apply.
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And in order to make it real, you organize the book around the three principles, perception, action, and will.
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Yeah.
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Okay.
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That's how the Stoics try to approach every situation they're in.
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First, how do we think about this?
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What's the story I'm telling myself about it?
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What's my view on it?
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The Stoics remind themselves that, you know, it's not things that are the problem.
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It's our opinion about those things, right?
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The story we tell ourselves about it, You know, this was unfair.
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This was cruel.
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I was humiliated.
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These are all subjective interpretations of an objective event.
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So first, how do we see this?
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That's really, really essential.
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Well, that's so interesting because since reading so many of your books and other people's books about stoicism, I now ask people, I used to say,
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oh, say, tell me what happened.
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I've now caught myself saying, what's the story you're telling yourself about this?
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Do you know what my therapist said to me once.
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I said, you know, I gave some interpretation of an event and she corrected me and she said, no, no, no. What you make up about this is.
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Yes.
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Right.
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It is.
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And then what I make up about it is my interpretation.
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That's right.
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So what is the story you have made up about what is actually happening?
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Yes.
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Yes.
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And so stoicism is training to be able to see things as objectively, as dispassionately as possible, not in the sway of our initial impression
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or our emotions or our bias or whatever pattern we have followed our whole life.
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Okay, could you give me an example using perception?
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Yeah.
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Okay, first and foremost, something happens and then we say, this is bad.
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Yeah.
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Or this is unrecoverable from, you know, my reputation has been damaged.
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That interpretation and stepping back and going, no, no, no, no. Somebody else might see this totally different.
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Or had I not known that this happened, had someone said that rude remark to you and you just didn't hear it, or your phone deleted the email, would your life be ruined?
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No, it's just that you know about it and then you have an opinion about it that is the problem.
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So trying to step back and see the thing first and foremost objectively.
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And then I think what we can get better at is going, hey, if I have the power to tell myself a negative story about this, I also have the power to tell myself a positive story about this.
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And that's where, when we say the obstacle is the way, what we mean is, hey, this is a chance for me to do something that I couldn't do under ordinary circumstances.
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So how do we, Ryan, train ourselves to see clearly when emotions are running high?
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How do you, so in every situation, you first do the assessment.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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And you sort of step back and you don't shut down your emotions or do you shut down your emotions?
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I don't think you shut them down.
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I think the stereotype...
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You repress your emotion.
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What do you do?
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Having the emotion to me is different than acting on the emotion.
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Uh -huh.
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Lincoln famously would get upset as all leaders do.
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And he would write these letters, but then he would put the letters in a drawer and not send them.
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Right.
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You can be angry.
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You don't you don't have to hit send because you can take a minute to think about it.
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So to me, Stoicism is that reflection, that pause after the initial impression.
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The Stoics are talking about taking every interpretation, every view, every instinct, every impulse, and putting it to the test, going, hey, how am I gonna feel about this later?
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Am I sure I'm not gonna regret this?
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Is this actually making it better or worse?
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So the Stoic philosophy is not to act, not to react emotionally, is to take a moment, take the whole thing in,
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and see, try to look at it from the perspective of what is actually happening here, and not just the story I'm telling myself about what's happening here.
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Yeah, it's that pause between the stimulus and the thing you do.
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Thank you.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 147 sentences and 1571 words to shadow. The speech runs for 9:10. The speaker talks at a natural 171 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 87% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 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. |
| interpretation noun | /ɪnˌtɜːpɹəˈteɪʃən/ | An act of interpreting or explaining something unclear; a translation; a version. |
| obstacle noun | /ˈɑbstəkəl/ | Something that impedes, stands in the way of, or holds up progress, either physically or figuratively |
| virtue noun | /ˈvɝt͡ʃu/ | The idea of all that is good or excellent (in every sense of those terms) in a human being, collectively instantiated by a varying number of human traits known… |
| circumstance noun | /ˈsɝ.kəmˌstæns/ | Something which is related to, or in some way affects, a fact or event. |
| ordinary adjective | /ˈɔɹdɪnɛɹi/ | Having regular jurisdiction; now only used in certain phrases. |
| impression noun | /ɪmˈpɹɛʃn̩/ | The indentation or depression made by the pressure of one object on or into another. |
| emperor noun | /ˈɛmp(ə)ɹə/ | The male monarch or ruler of an empire. |
| discipline noun | /ˈdɪsəplɪn/ | A controlled behaviour; self-control. |
| perception noun | /pɚˈsɛpʃ(ə)n/ | The organisation, identification and interpretation of sensory information. |
| pause noun | /pɔːz/ | A temporary stop or rest; an intermission of action; interruption; suspension; cessation. |
| drawer noun | /dɹɔɹ/ | An open-topped box that can be slid in and out of the cabinet that contains it, used for storing clothing or other articles. |
| foremost adjective | /ˈfɔː.məʊst/ | Positioned in front of (all) others in space, most forward. |
| vast adjective | /væst/ | Very large or wide (literally or figuratively). |
| reputation noun | /ˌɹɛpjʊˈteɪʃən/ | What somebody or something is known for. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| step back verb | /stɛp ˈbæk/ | To stop what one is doing and evaluate the current situation. |
| move forward verb | To cause to make progress. | |
| shut down verb | To close, terminate, or end; to stop operating, either permanently or temporarily. | |
| come across verb | To change sides; to cross over to work for the opposition. | |
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. |
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 | you've written · have been · I've now caught |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was struck · being challenged · was humiliated |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 47 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, we're, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, interpretation /ɪnˌtɜːpɹəˈteɪʃən/, impression /ɪmˈpɹɛʃn̩/, perception /pɚˈsɛpʃ(ə)n/, reputation /ˌɹɛpjʊˈteɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: interpretation /ɪnˌtɜːpɹəˈteɪʃən/, ordinary /ˈɔɹdɪnɛɹi/, reputation /ˌɹɛpjʊˈteɪʃən/, emotionally /ɪˈməʊʃənəli/, creativity /kri.eɪˈtɪv.ᵻ.ti/
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 emotion, interpretation, obstacle.
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.