Shadowing Practice: Why Millennials and Gen Z Are SO BURNED OUT 😩 - Learn English Speaking with Video

I'm so burnt out of my job.

I think I speak for all millennials when I say we're tired in a way that feels permanent.

Our whole generation is burned out because of the lack of progress.

So guys, the millennials are burnt out, okay?

They're done.

They're stressed.

They are frustrated.

And they've had it up to here with how things are going.

Personally speaking, I'm a millennial myself.

I'm 32 years old.

Starting to get a few gray hairs here in the beard and a couple right up here, which I don't really like.

But as a millennial, I find all of this to be pretty interesting.

And we've got a handful of interesting videos to check out today.

So let's hear from some folks.

If no one else will say it, I will.

Millennials are the burnout generation.

When I first heard that term, it resonated so deeply in my bones.

Like, wait, life isn't supposed to feel like this?

We're not supposed to feel chronic exhaustion and stress from work?

We're not supposed to be taking care of young kids and aging parents with zero support?

We're not supposed to be juggling full-time jobs and side gigs just to stay afloat?

I think because that's just what I saw all around me, I just accepted that that's just what life is.

And I know I'm not alone in feeling this way.

If you look at the stats, half of millennials have quit a job because of burnout.

And millennials more than any other generation have experienced burnout from their jobs.

And yes, that describes 84% of us.

And combine that with mass layoffs happening even when companies are profitable, I mean, the math just ain't mathing anymore.

Lately, I've had a huge reframing about all of this.

And it started when my husband and I both got laid off within weeks of each other.

We were both senior and successful in our fields.

And we were the types of people that just poured ourselves into our work.

Never fully unplugged, always on call, went above and beyond because that was the unspoken contract, right?

I will give you my all and you take care of me, Mr. Corporate.

And when that contract was broken, I mean, it was a kick in the face, but I actually think it freed us from just blindly accepting what was no longer serving us.

And in the spirit of questioning the old script and rewriting our own, we decided to bet on ourselves and start our own business

and just exit from the system that wasn't holding up its end of the deal.

So if you're someone that's been experiencing massive burnout, just know that you're not the problem.

We're all living inside a broken system that's failed us.

And I want to give you a gentle push to take back pieces of your life, your energy, your health, your boundaries, and to let you know that you're not alone.

And we'll get through this together.

Okay.

So this is a really interesting video.

Generally speaking, I'm not a big fan of, you know, the, it's not you, it's them type of framing.

I don't really like the sentiment, you know, that you're not the problem.

It's the system.

That's the problem.

You're just fine the way that you are.

It's not your fault at all.

And listen, and I get it.

Life is tough, okay?

It's messy.

It's chaotic.

It's never, it's never ever the thing you'd expect.

Life can be difficult.

And, you know, we do live in a day

and age where it seems like things just continue to get more and more expensive over time.

And it's, you know, feels like it's harder than ever to keep your head above water financially, at least.

But once again, as a human being with a conscience and with agency and the will to make your own decisions, I think you have to take on some of that responsibility

and know that the situation that you're in today does not have to be the one that you're in tomorrow.

And I do like that bit of messaging from this video here.

This girl said that her and her husband just kind of blindly accepted that, you know, things were the way that they were because that's all

that they saw around them until they decided to reframe that and flip it on its head.

In doing so, and looking around at their lives and figuring out this is not what we want, this is not how we want to live, they decided to make a change.

They changed their situation, they changed jobs, and they used the agency that they have to take themselves out of a bad situation and find themselves a better one.

In doing so, life probably looks a lot better today than it used to for them.

And once again, guys, look, I get it.

Life can be tough.

Your jobs can be tough.

It's not always fun.

It's not always going to be a walk in the park and I think that everybody to some degree experiences some

burnout in some capacity.

You can't really avoid that, but I do think that if that becomes more of your baseline state where you are just always tired,

you're always burnt out, that's probably a good sign that you need to make some sort of change.

I'm so burnt out of my job.

I am so cooked.

My nervous system is fried.

Today is the day after Labor Day, Tuesday, and it feels like a Monday.

I feel like no matter what I do in life, I don't get a break.

I can't get a break. And it's rough.

You think after working hard and doing all the stuff that you're supposed to do, corporate America and Uncle Sam will give you a break, will give you opportunity.

And I don't see that at all.

I feel so hopeless.

I feel so disillusioned and lost.

And I'm really just hanging in there because today is a really heavy day.

It's been a really, really rough day.

and I feel like I'm not supposed to talk about

that to anyone I work with that I'm supposed to keep

that to myself and show up with a smile and there's only

so much I can take us men are told to be strong our whole lives

and we can't be weak so here I am stuffing it down

and and just you carry all this on your shoulders time after time after time after time.

I'm exhausted.

It's just like things are getting worse in my life in a lot of ways

and in the world and it's just overwhelming.

I feel like I'm drowning and it sucks.

Yeah, I definitely feel for this guy.

I, you know, I went through a phase in my life where I probably felt very similarly to him.

I will tell you this though, when I was going through this phase of my life where I was very unhappy with my job,

it was somewhere around this point that I randomly stumbled upon this quote from Warren Buffett.

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And at the time, I had no idea who Warren Buffett was.

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But I somehow read this classic quote from him that goes, if you don't find a way to make money in your sleep, you will work until you die.

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And I'll tell you what, hearing that quote at that point in my life hit me like a ton of bricks.

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Because not being happy with my job at all, not unlike this guy, I thought to myself, there is no way in heck I'm doing this for the rest of my life.

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If I have to work this cruddy job for the rest of my life, I'm probably not going to make it very long.

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That was definitely like a rock bottom moment for me.

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And it sounds like this guy is pretty dang close to it because once you, once the genie's out of the bottle, there's no putting it back in.

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But it was at that point and reading that quote that made me think, dude, I need to like start setting some money away.

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I can't work this job forever.

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I need my money to start working for me.

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And that's what prompted me to start investing and looking into investing.

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And I will say, you know, I started doing that at 25, 26 years old.

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That was hands down the best decision that I made.

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I wish I would have started doing it years and years ago.

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But, you know, even just making the decision to start putting money away and, you know, even saving $5 a week at first, $10 a week, you know, not much, but something,

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even that little something, you know, started to become this light at the end of the tunnel and with each contribution,

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with each new investment, I started to see that light getting brighter and brighter and brighter.

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And finally, I saw that this is my escape right here.

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Eventually, it'll get to a point where it's like, I won't even need this job anymore.

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You can't tell me what to do.

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I don't need this anymore because I've got my money working for me over here.

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And I really think, honestly, that's how we should think of our jobs is kind of a means to

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that end because I think one of the most important things in life as having complete ownership of your time.

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So you don't have to feel this way.

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I think if you had more control over your time and felt like you had more control over your life, you probably wouldn't feel the way that this guy does in his situation

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and the way that I felt in my situation and the way

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that you might feel in your situation if you are one of those millennials feeling as burnt out as this dude.

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So all of that is to say start investing if you're not already doing so.

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I promise it will change your life in more ways than one.

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And I think it will give you a sense of hope if you don't have one.

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And also in the meantime, you know, change your job, start looking for a different job.

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Our whole generation is burned out because of the lack of progress.

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Can you imagine the mental that millennials and Gen Z's are going through that they've worked the past five years,

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making $60,000, making 300 grand and having no savings, no investing, and actually more in debt.

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And people chalk it up to budgeting, living within your means.

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They're making 60 grand in 2026.

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How do you cut when you're making 60K?

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That is the means.

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If it's someone making $250,000, sure, we can find some shit to cut.

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40, 50, 60K?

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What do you want them to cut?

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Protein?

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Health insurance?

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The only thing they could possibly do is live with six roommates.

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And when people start to make progress, it feels like the goalpost is moved.

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You're like, I finally got to 72 grand and now my rent is 300 more?

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And you really think that 100 million people are lazy?

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That is your conclusion?

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Conclusion, 100 million of us are lazy.

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Man, interesting.

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Or is it the system broken?

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I don't know, maybe I'm naive, but I still think you can do a lot with $60,000.

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That's $5,000 every single month.

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And for my personal situation, just for full context, between my wife, myself, we have a baby,

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we own our home, we do have a paid off car and we only have one car, so that definitely helps us save on the budget.

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But all of our living expenses, including health insurance, including car insurance, including home insurance, the whole nine yards is less than $4,000 a month.

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And I wouldn't even say we live in a super low cost of living area.

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We live in Las Vegas.

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It's cheaper than other places.

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It's more expensive than others.

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But man, if I was making $5,000 a month, I don't feel like I'd have any issues living off of that.

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And there've been periods before where I've made considerably less.

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Like when we moved to Las Vegas, I don't even know if I was making $3,000 a month and we still made it work.

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And this guy completely ruled out budgeting as an option as

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if there's no possible room left to cut from the budget because you're only making $5,000.

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But man, I would be hard pressed to believe that that's actually true.

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Maybe if you live in a high cost of living area, you know, if you lived in like Southern California or something like that, or even like New York.

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Yeah, that's probably a different story.

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But like I said, there are plenty of places still where you could do a lot with 5k.

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I still think it's worth checking out that budget.

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You may be surprised at what you find that you're able to cut.

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I think that Millennials Midlife Crisis is gonna look

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and feel a lot different than the midlife crisis of boomers or Gen Xers.

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And I say this from personal experience as an older millennial that has recently surpassed 40.

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And something happened at that time in my life where I guess I took a breath

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that was just deep enough and a pause

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that was just long enough to look around and realize

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that like I've lived half of my life

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and I've still got another half to go and realizing that the first half was largely just a performance.

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You know, pretending to be the version that everybody else expected of me.

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You know, an imposter version that fit in with societal expectations.

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And don't get me wrong, I give myself a lot of like grace and self-compassion for this because I did it for a reason, right?

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I did that because it felt like the safe, secure path.

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But now here I was at 40 years old, still didn't have a house, didn't have much of a retirement account,

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and you know last year I was laid off from my job and it got me looking around and thinking, okay I don't feel very safe and secure anymore.

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And so if this old way is no longer working to keep me not only safe but also not happy, why not try something different?

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Why not try investing in myself?

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It's like this fork in the road

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that you are forced to confront to either keep trudging along

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this same path where the finish line just continues to move or to carve your own path.

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And I'm only about a year and a half into this 40s midlife awakening, and I'm not rich.

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But let me tell you, I've never felt more content.

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I've never felt more at peace with myself.

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Like yes, does the world still stress me out?

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Do I still wake up every morning and look at my bank account

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and wonder how much longer is this going to last me?

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Abso-frickin-lutely.

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But the thing is, I think that's what makes the millennial midlife crisis different than others is that we're choosing ourselves.

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We're choosing to use this as an opportunity to create an escape route

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so that we can make the next 40 years of our life feel a little bit more human, a little bit more meaningful.

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I really like a lot of what this guy has to say.

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I'm listening to this it brings me back to the importance of investing

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and trying to reach financial freedom as fast as possible.

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This guy you know now halfway-ish through his life has decided

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that what's really important at this stage and what's really been important the entire time is contentment.

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It's peace of mind.

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It's the ability to control your own time and control your life and be the person that you want to be, whoever that is.

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I don't want to shove this down your throat too much, but investing really is the key to unlocking that.

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You know, if you have your money working for you

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and you're making enough passively to pay all of your expenses or at least most of them, just removing that financial burden from your life

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and not having to worry about that as much is so freeing and it's such a huge weight off of your shoulders.

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And the less time that you have to spend working is time

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that you can spend actually doing the things

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that you wanna do with the people that you want to do them with and what's more important than that?

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Like I said, I really resonate with a lot of what this guy has to say

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and I think the sooner

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that we can come around to this way of thinking where it really is all about contentment

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and peace of mind and controlling your own life and having full ownership of your time, the sooner that we can get to this point, think the better off we'll all be.

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I think I speak for all millennials when I say we're tired in a way that feels permanent.

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You know, it's not like I stayed up too late type of tired or I just need a good night's rest tired.

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No, it's more like I have 507 open tabs in my brain that I can't close type of tired.

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And I think it's because we've been conditioned to like always be on, you know, there's always something, something we forgot or need to schedule or need to buy or need to remember next week.

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And the rare instance that we do get a second to relax, our brains are still working.

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They're still running the background process like updating the anxiety

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or installing new stress for absolutely no reason But the craziest part is that like we've gotten so used to it.

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We don't even talk about it anymore You know, you'll ask somebody how you doing?

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They'll say tired and everybody just kind of nods along like yep

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that checks out We don't even ask why you know

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because at this point being tired isn't like an occasional feeling It's become part of our operating system.

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Like honestly, I don't think millennials need more sleep I think we all just need one day where absolutely nothing requires our attention.

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This guy's funny.

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I got to say, I totally get where he's coming from

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when he's talking about it being difficult to turn the brain off sometimes and not be in work mode.

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You know, as someone who makes YouTube videos and does this whole social media thing as a job, I can totally relate to that.

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There are always comments to respond to.

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There are always emails to catch up on.

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There's always another video to make, another post to push out.

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There's always something more that you can do.

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And I know I'm not alone in this, but I think for some reason or another, you know, at times we feel guilt if we're not being productive and,

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you know, continuing to check things off the to-do list.

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If we're just chilling, I've found that there's a sense of guilt that comes with that because, you know, on the other side of that, you think, well, I could be doing more.

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And man, that's such a dangerous mindset to fall into, number one but number two, it's also a very difficult one to avoid, and you have to actively practice turning that part of your brain off.

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Personally speaking, one thing that's really helped me is just not having my phone on me.

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If I ever feel like things get to be too much, you know, just remove that.

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Just put it in the other room and don't even think about it, and go pick up a book or something.

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And that's another thing that also really helps me, doing things that require my full attention to where I can't do this thing but also be on my phone.

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Reading a book is a great example of that.

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Running is another one.

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I'm big into running.

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And when I'm running, I'm not on my phone.

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It's fantastic.

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At the same time, though, attached to that, you know, I definitely don't want to complain because I will gladly have all of that,

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have the comments and the emails and the videos to make and everything that comes along with that.

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I will take that any day of the week over doing something that doesn't bring me fulfillment,

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over doing something that I don't enjoy because I can't tell you how much I love doing this, making these videos, writing my newsletter.

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this has been a dream job and and all of the stress

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and the constant attention that comes along with it I will gladly take

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and yeah don't get me wrong I get tired for sure

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once again like I was saying earlier we all get tired we all feel burnt out at times

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if you do something long enough but that's also why I invest

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because someday all that passive income is going to pay my bills

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and if I don't want to work I won't have to

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but anyway with all of that said now I want to hear from you.

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What do you make of all of this?

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Is the burnout real?

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Are millennials just whining?

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What do you think is the solution to all of this here?

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Let me know in the comments.

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And also, thank you so much for sticking around to the end if you are still tuning into this video.

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If you like these reaction videos, then definitely check out this next one right over here.

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We're going to go through a handful of more videos, and I'll give you my reactions.

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So click right over here to check those out, and I'll see you in the next one.

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561 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “Why Millennials and Gen Z Are SO BURNED OUT 😩”. This video has 271 sentences and 3680 words to shadow. The speech runs for 17:42. The speaker talks fast, about 208 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 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

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
millennial adjective	/mɪˈlɛn.ɪ.əl/	Thousand-year-old; also (by extension, loosely) thousands of years old.
burnout noun	/ˈbɜː(ɹ)naʊt/	The experience of long-term exhaustion and diminished interest, especially in one's career.
midlife adjective	/ˈmɪdlaɪf/	Occurring in the middle point of one's life, usually considered about 45.
blindly adverb	/ˈblaɪndli/	In a blind manner; without sight.
contentment noun	/kənˈtɛntmənt/	The state or degree of being contented or satisfied.
reframe verb		To mount in a frame again.
resonate verb	/ˈɹɛz.əˌneɪt/	To vibrate or sound, especially in response to another vibration.
gladly adverb	/ˈɡlædli/	In a glad manner; happily.
handful noun	/ˈhæn(d)fʊl/	The amount that a hand will grasp or contain.
guilt noun	/ɡɪlt/	Responsibility for wrongdoing.
afloat adjective	/əˈfloʊt/	Floating.
awaken verb	/əˈweɪkən/	To cause to become awake.
disillusion verb	/dɪs.ɪˈluːʒən/	To free or deprive of illusion; to disenchant.
exhaustion noun	/ɪɡˈzɔːs.t͡ʃən/	The point of complete depletion, of the state of being used up.
fricking adjective	/ˈfɹɪkɪŋ/	A minced oath of "fucking" as an intensifier.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
check out verb		To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).
go through verb		To travel from one end of something to the other.
burn out verb		To destroy by fire.
look around verb		To inspect a building or area.
figure out verb		To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
get through verb	/ɡɛt ˈθɹu/	To overcome; to endure.
hands down adverb		without much effort; easily
hold up verb		To wait or delay.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

I'm so burnt out of my job.
Personally speaking, I'm a millennial myself.
We're not supposed to feel chronic exhaustion and stress from work?
What do you want them to cut?
What do you make of all of this?

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result	If no one else will say
“Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true	used to for · used to it
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	have experienced · they've worked · there've been
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is burned · are burnt · are frustrated

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 118 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, I'm, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: disillusion /dɪs.ɪˈluːʒən/, shave /ˈʃeɪ̯v/, compassion /kəmˈpæʃ.ən/, conscience /ˈkɑn.ʃəns/, expectation /ˌɛk.spɛkˈteɪ.ʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: millennial /mɪˈlɛn.ɪ.əl/, disillusion /dɪs.ɪˈluːʒən/, expectation /ˌɛk.spɛkˈteɪ.ʃən/, considerably /kənˈsɪdəɹəbli/, occasional /əˈkeɪʒ(ə)nəl/

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 millennial, burnout, midlife.

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.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

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