Shadowing Practice: Why You Feel Small Around Some People (Fix This) - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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Hey there, and welcome to This Explainer.
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Hey there, and welcome to This Explainer.
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Why do we suddenly lose our confidence around certain people?
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Look, if you're tuning into this,
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I want to set the record straight right off the bat.
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You are totally 100% normal most of the time.
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You talk fine, your thoughts are clear,
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you're sharp, you know your stuff.
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But, well, I also know exactly why you're here.
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You've probably noticed that around certain individuals,
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maybe a really intimidating boss,
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a hyper-successful peer, or a big-ticket client,
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your entire vibe just changes.
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Your voice gets a little shaky,
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your thoughts suddenly slow to a crawl,
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you second-guess literally everything you say,
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and you just kind of shrink, physically and mentally.
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It's wild, right?
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You're the exact same person,
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but your behavior does a total 180.
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Well, today, put your coach's hat on with me,
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because we are going to fix that.
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So, why do you become smaller around these specific people?
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Look, we are skipping all the general feel-good fluff today,
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no empty motivational theories here.
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I am absolutely not going to just tell you to believe in yourself because let's be real,
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that advice is completely useless when your brain is actively freezing up in the middle of a high stakes meeting.
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Instead, we're diving straight into the actual mechanical issue happening in your mind.
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And more importantly, we're going to look at exactly how to reprogram it so you can stay grounded,
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confident, and effective no matter who happens to be standing in front of you.
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Okay, so the absolute most crucial concept to grasp here is what we call context-based confidence.
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You've got to take this idea that you have a permanently fixed low confidence
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or that your confidence is somehow just broken and throw it out the window.
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It's just not true.
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Think about it.
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You have incredibly high confidence when you're hanging out with your friends, right?
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Or when you're geeking out of your favorite hobby.
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Your confidence is entirely context-based.
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It's literally just a reaction to the specific room you're in and the specific person you're talking to.
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So your system isn't broken at all.
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It's just accidentally running the wrong software program in certain situations.
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To really understand why this software glitch happens,
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we need to look at a mechanical failure in the brain that I like to call the comparison switch.
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When you walk into a room,
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your mind instantly, and I mean completely automatically, scans the other person.
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It's like a lightning-fast audit.
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It compares status.
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It compares knowledge.
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It compares appearance.
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And if your brain's rapid-fire assessment decides,
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uh-oh, this person is above me, boom, that switch flips.
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Your behavior automatically adjusts to play a subordinate role.
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Without even realizing it, you stop acting like an equal and start acting like you're beneath them.
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Now here's where it gets really fascinating.
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Let's look at the massive productivity leak this switch creates.
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Once your brain decides someone is above you,
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you actually stop focusing on the conversation itself.
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Instead, your cognitive load just splits right down the middle.
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50% of your brain power is desperately trying to listen to what they're saying,
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but that other 50% is furiously monitoring you.
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It's panicking, asking, am I sounding stupid right now?
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Did that sentence even make sense?
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Oh man, what do they think of me?
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You have literally cut your processing power in half during a high-stakes moment.
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I mean, no wonder your performance tanks, right?
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And because you're running on half power,
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this immense, crushing pressure to perform just builds up.
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You're no longer naturally collaborating or chatting,
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you're actively trying to impress them,
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or honestly, just trying to survive without making a fool of yourself.
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All this split attention creates intense hesitation.
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And to the person sitting across from you,
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that hesitation looks exactly like a lack of confidence.
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To make it even worse,
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your brain starts pulling up these distorted,
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cringy memories of past awkward moments.
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You know, like that time you accidentally called your boss mom.
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Yeah, your brain whispers, hey,
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don't mess up like last time,
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which just triggers a full blown freeze response.
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Alright, enough diagnosing.
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Let's get into the action plan.
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We know exactly what the bug in the system is,
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so now it's time to execute the patch.
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We are going to use five specific reprogramming steps.
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Remember, as your productivity coach today,
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I want you treating this not as some deep,
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unchangeable personality flaw you're stuck with,
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but just as a psychological cycle.
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A cycle that we can absolutely interrupt and overwrite with much better habits.
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Seriously, you might want to grab a pen and take notes on these five techniques.
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Okay, step one.
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This one is an entirely internal mindset shift.
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Remove the ranking.
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Before you even open your mouth to speak,
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you have to stop that comparison switch from flipping in the first place.
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You need to consciously intervene the exact second you catch your brain trying to put the other person on a pedestal.
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What this means in practice is shifting your mindset from mental ranking to an equal exchange.
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Stop.
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And I mean completely stop mentally placing people above or below you just because of their fancy job title,
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the expensive car they drive,
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or how assertive their tone of voice is.
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You've got to consciously decide to treat every single interaction as a perfectly equal exchange of information.
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It's just a conversation between two adults,
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it is not a performance evaluation of your worth as a human being.
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Try this.
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Next time you walk into a daunting meeting,
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explicitly tell yourself, I am here to exchange value, not to be graded.
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Alright, so once you've mentally leveled the playing field,
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we move right into step two, shift focus outward.
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Remember that 50% of your brain power you were bleeding out by obsessively self-monitoring?
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Yeah, we need to reclaim that processing power immediately.
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Because let's be honest, you absolutely cannot be effective if you are trapped inside your own head,
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spiraling over your hand gestures,
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or whether you use the right vocabulary word.
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So where should your attention actually be?
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You need to direct 100% of your focus onto exactly what they are actively saying,
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what you genuinely want to ask them,
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and what you actually think about the topic at hand.
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It's a fundamental rule of productivity.
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Your confidence instantly shoots up the second your attention leaves yourself and anchors entirely onto the external task.
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If you make yourself intensely,
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genuinely curious about them and the problem you're solving,
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you simply won't have the mental bandwidth left over to be anxious about yourself.
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It's a total game changer.
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Now for step three.
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I want you to slow your responses.
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Notice how my pacing is changing right now.
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When we feel intimidated, our internal clock goes into overdrive.
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It speeds way up.
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We feel this intense, rushing urge to just fill the dead air,
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to agree as quickly as possible,
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to desperately prove that we belong in the conversation.
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You have to physically override that exact urge.
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The sheer power of pausing is your greatest tool right here.
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Listen to me.
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You do not need to reply instantly.
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When the other person finishes speaking, just pause.
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Take a literal breath.
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Actually think about what you want to say, and then speak.
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This tiny, simple two-second delay completely drains the panic out of your nervous system.
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It stops those rushed, rambling,
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word-vomit answers, and it eliminates the completely unnecessary mistakes that happen when your mouth decides to move way faster than your brain.
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A well-placed pause doesn't signal weakness.
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It signals grounded, thoughtful authority.
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Okay, let's pick the pace back up and talk about external behaviors.
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Step 4.
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Stop correcting mid-sentence.
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Because here's the thing.
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Even if you've successfully slowed down your responses,
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you might still catch yourself doing things that broadcast your internal anxiety to the entire room.
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We need to do a quick audit of your verbal output.
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Start noticing these bad habits that actively signal uncertainty.
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Are you restarting your sentences three different times just because you couldn't find the absolutely perfect adjective?
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Are you over explaining a super simple point because you're terrified they didn't understand you?
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Or maybe you're constantly backtracking and fixing every single word as it falls out of your mouth.
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Look, when you do this,
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you're actively telling the other person,
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hey, I don't really trust what I'm saying.
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It absolutely torpedoes your credibility in real time.
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So here is the hard,
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non-negotiable execution rule for step four.
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Let your sentences finish clean.
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If you start a thought,
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you commit to it, and you push all the way through to the period.
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Even if it is not perfectly articulated,
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even if you said the word good instead of exceptional,
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Just finish the sentence and stop talking.
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Delivering a slightly imperfect sentence cleanly is infinitely more confident than delivering a grammatically flawless sentence nervously.
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And finally, that brings us to step 5.
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Repeat exposure.
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This is all about long-term maintenance and setting realistic expectations for yourself.
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Let's be real, you are not going to perfectly apply these first four steps tomorrow
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and just magically never feel intimidated again for the rest of your life.
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That's simply not how human psychology works,
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but what you can do right now is commit to the process of reprogramming.
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Moving forward, you have a very distinct choice to make.
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If you actively avoid these high-stress interactions,
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you're just keeping the old,
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shrinking pattern alive and well.
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Avoidance literally feeds the fear.
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But if you face them often,
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if you purposefully put yourself in rooms with the exact people who trigger that comparison switch,
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your system naturally starts to adjust.
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You don't have to be flawless in these meetings.
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You just have to be in the room,
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consistently practicing the pause, delivering those clean sentences,
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and keeping your focus locked outward.
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And what actually changes over time is absolutely fascinating.
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No, you don't magically drink a potion and transform into the most confident person on earth.
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Instead, purely through repetition, that mental comparison naturally fades out.
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That massive 50% self-monitoring tax we talked about,
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it drops to 10% and eventually down to zero.
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Your responses become fluid and natural again.
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The old pattern of shrinking just loses its grip on your nervous system,
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entirely because you've proven to your brain over and over again that these interactions are just equal exchanges, not threats.
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As we wrap up this explainer,
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I want to leave you with this profound rule of thumb to carry with you.
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The moment you stop treating people as higher, you stop lowering yourself.
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Think about that.
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You don't actually lose confidence around certain people.
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You just temporarily slip into a version of yourself that was trained to feel smaller.
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Take this exact five-step framework and start applying it today.
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But before you go, I want you to ask yourself one question.
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What would happen to your career trajectory if you never gave away your power in a room ever again?
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Keep pushing forward, keep practicing,
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and I will catch you in the next explainer.
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Context & Background
In this insightful video, the speaker, a confidence coach, explores a common phenomenon many people experience: feeling small or losing confidence in the presence of certain individuals. This feeling often arises during high-pressure situations, such as meetings with a boss, conversations with successful peers, or interactions with clients. The speaker emphasizes that this feeling is normal and contextual, stemming from a psychological process called "context-based confidence." By understanding this, viewers can learn to manage their confidence levels effectively, regardless of their surroundings or the people they are interacting with.
Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication
- “I know my stuff.” - A reminder to affirm personal expertise in conversations.
- “Let’s focus on facts.” - Encouraging a shift away from personal comparison to objective discussion.
- “My confidence is context-based.” - Acknowledging that confidence can vary depending on the situation.
- “I’ll be grounded and effective.” - Setting an intention to remain stable regardless of external pressures.
- “Let’s flip the switch.” - A metaphor for changing from a negative mindset to a positive approach.
Step-by-step Shadowing Guide
If you're looking to enhance your English speaking skills, incorporating the shadowing technique from this video can be significantly beneficial. Here's a structured approach to help you practice and overcome the challenges discussed:
- Select a Shadow Speech: Choose a segment of the video that resonates with you. It's vital to select a part where the speaker addresses confidence, as this will give context to your practice.
- Listen Actively: Play the segment while focusing on the speaker’s intonation, rhythm, and pace. This will help train your ear and familiarize you with natural speech patterns.
- Pause and Repeat: Utilize the shadowing app to pause after each sentence. Repeat what you hear, mimicking the speaker’s emotions and expressions as closely as possible.
- Record Yourself: Use your device to record your attempts. Listening to yourself can illustrate where you might need to adjust your pronunciation or tone.
- Analyze and Adjust: Compare your recordings with the original speech. Notice the differences and focus on areas where you can improve, especially in terms of confidence and clarity.
By integrating these techniques into your English speaking practice, you will enhance your ability to communicate effectively, regardless of the context or individuals around you. Embrace the journey, and transform your experience with the shadowing technique into powerful, confident dialogue!
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.
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