Shadowing Practice: Why You Feel Stuck (And How to Fix It Instantly) - Learn English Speaking with Video
Choose a practice mode
Each mode opens a full-screen practice room.
197 sentences
If sentences are too short or too long, click Edit to adjust them.
1
the ideal day.
2
It's really simple.
3
And now you're grounded in your body.
4
This is the track.
5
We have to follow the track.
6
This is how you track forward.
7
How far would you like to go in the future?
8
We're going to do time travel.
9
So you, I don't do hypotheticals.
10
I want to know what you're going to do.
11
I immediately thought a decade, 10 years.
12
Okay.
13
Think about, you don't have to say it.
14
Think about the age you'll be and the age your husband, your children will be.
15
Sort of move your mind forward like a calendar.
16
Now, here are the instructions.
17
Your life is absolutely what it was meant to be.
18
Every expression of your greatest joy and your greatest fulfillment.
19
You're going to wake up on a day that is an ordinary day in a perfect life, in an ideal life.
20
So what I'm going to do is I'll prompt you with a few things
21
and I want you to let your senses answer these questions, not your mind.
22
So your mind can't time travel.
23
It will tell you it can, but it can't.
24
Only the body can time travel.
25
And this is how it goes.
26
You wake up on this morning and you don't even open your eyes.
27
You listen.
28
What do you hear on this day, an ordinary day in your perfect life in 2034.
29
What do you hear?
30
I hear waves and I hear little kids laughing.
31
Okay.
32
So smell the air.
33
Don't open your eyes.
34
What do you smell?
35
Salt.
36
Coffee.
37
I'm seeing a theme here.
38
All right.
39
Open your eyes.
40
Look at the sheets.
41
What color are they?
42
White.
43
Look at the floor.
44
What does it look like?
45
Wood?
46
Yeah, it's a wide planked wood floor that's sort of, it's kind of, it's not shiny.
47
It's like worn.
48
Cool.
49
Look over across from you in the bed.
50
Who's there, if anyone?
51
Chris.
52
Loaded question.
53
Okay, great.
54
Look at the look at the room what do you see the whole room um it's very um like uh
55
like just kind of modern and unfussy and beautiful
56
and are there photographs on the walls no there was a there's like a painting
57
or a photograph okay what does it look like It's, it was like a big beach scene.
58
Ah, this theme is strong.
59
It's very strong.
60
All right.
61
Are there windows in the room?
62
There's one.
63
Okay.
64
Get up and go to the window and look out.
65
Okay.
66
What do you see?
67
Your life is perfect.
68
What do you see?
69
The ocean.
70
Okay.
71
It could also be like the Alps and the Sahara.
72
Like you can see anything.
73
There are no rules here.
74
Okay.
75
It's just imagination.
76
Yeah.
77
But you see the ocean.
78
Mm -hmm.
79
Is it like a tropical ocean or is it northern?
80
No, it's sort of northern.
81
Okay.
82
Rocky or just sandy?
83
Don't think.
84
It's just the ocean.
85
Cool.
86
All right.
87
So you go into your bathroom.
88
Uh -huh.
89
It's the perfect bathroom.
90
Look at the design of the everything in the bathroom.
91
And then look at yourself in the mirror.
92
And you are your healthiest, most radiant, physically fit self.
93
Take that in.
94
You are looking fabulous.
95
Yes.
96
And so you do your morning stuff, take a shower or whatever.
97
Then you go to your closet and open the door.
98
This is very important.
99
The clothes in your closet reflect everything you do in your perfect life because you have to wear different things.
100
So I always ask people, look at the shoes.
101
What kinds of shoes do you have?
102
Oh, they're all like flip -flops and Birkenstocks.
103
There's no like strappy sandals with stiletto heels?
104
Nope.
105
Hiking boots?
106
Not at this house.
107
Oh, you have more than one house.
108
See how that came in?
109
This is fabulous.
110
So this is your beach house, clearly.
111
And you do not do formal wear at the beach house.
112
So what you're going to do now, Chris is still in the bed.
113
Maybe you go into the kitchen and you walk through this house.
114
As you walk through the house, see if there are pictures of events that have happened.
115
Like right now, I can see a picture behind you of a wonderful family trip to the ocean.
116
Look for the pictures that have been taken in the years between 2024 and 2034.
117
Two weddings.
118
Awesome.
119
Yeah.
120
Cool.
121
Wow.
122
Grandbabies.
123
Oh, good.
124
Is it their laughter you can hear?
125
Yeah.
126
Oh, I thought so.
127
I love it.
128
I love that.
129
Can you feel that you are creating this future as we go through this?
130
You are out of anxiety and into imagination and the tears in your eyes tell me it's real.
131
Yeah.
132
You're finding your purpose right now.
133
And the things that bring tears to your eyes are the real purpose.
134
Forget career, forget money, forget all that bullshit.
135
When you're dying, it's the pictures of your grandkids you're going to look at.
136
Like it's, it's the hugs they give you.
137
It's stuff that society says isn't valuable because there's no money attached to it.
138
That's bullshit.
139
When I walk people through this, we go through the whole day, who's in the kitchen and walk all the way.
140
I won't do it now because it would take the whole session, but you go through the whole morning and see, I'll ask you, what do you do in the mornings?
141
Well, you know, what's interesting is, um, I walk the beach.
142
I have a big thing of water.
143
I practice yoga.
144
I read on the porch.
145
Who's there?
146
I'm just hanging my family and my parents.
147
Oh, that's, can you feel how free that is?
148
Yeah.
149
Like, because you've done so much in the world that says, you know, be a lawyer, be that, You got all that stuff that was harsh
150
and cruel and sort of tried to knock the sentimentality out of you.
151
It was pushing you away from your purpose and into fear, into anxiety.
152
Because when we leave the track of our joy, a natural response is to be terrified.
153
And then we get stuck in that spiral and we can't come back.
154
But when you begin to create, which you just did, with your senses and your imagination, not verbal mind.
155
Don't be counting things and measuring how it's going to happen.
156
No, that's all left hemisphere thinking.
157
Senses and joy.
158
That's how you track your future.
159
And as you track it, you create it.
160
I wanted to ask you about the senses.
161
Yeah.
162
Because what happens when you tap into that creativity and you really navigate through a day like that using only senses,
163
because I did catch myself at times, and I'm sure as you were listening and you were imagining your ideal day, you caught yourself thinking too.
164
And it takes you out of the feel.
165
Why do the senses matter and why do they help you unlock your sense of purpose
166
and joy and tap into this creativity?
167
I'm so glad you asked.
168
And again, I don't want to get all sciencey here, but the left hemisphere of the brain, which is glorified by our society,
169
that left hemisphere is what talks and counts and measures time
170
and thinks of problems and tries to like get what it wants.
171
And it's very fear -based.
172
So it gets stuck in anxiety.
173
When you go to the senses, if I asked you, you know, imagine the taste of lemon, immediately the right hemisphere would start to light up.
174
The senses and our sense of being in place activate the right hemisphere, and so does imagination.
175
So, and creativity like sums it all up.
176
So any artist is just in the present moment, very much in contact with what we're making,
177
and not stuck in fear at all, the interesting thing is that after you come out of a session of that,
178
because your right hemisphere doesn't track time and you go back into the verbal left hemisphere, it will say, well, that was nothing.
179
That didn't even happen.
180
There was no time.
181
I don't know what you were doing.
182
What is that about?
183
So when you say, you know, I say, oh yeah, bliss and white light and everything.
184
And you're like, ah, how does that add up? it's the right hemisphere
185
that gives us our sense of meaning our sense of connection our sense of joy
186
and the mind that goes no that actually is a completely different part of the brain
187
but as I said anxiety shuts down creativity but creativity shuts down anxiety
188
so while you were doing the ideal day how anxious were you zero yeah nothing yeah just pure feeling yeah some scientists,
189
some psychologists set out to discover why we have all species on earth.
190
There's a certain proportion of us that take our own lives on purpose.
191
No other animal does that, that we know of.
192
And the answer to why we do that is language.
193
Because of the way we think in language and time,
194
we can construct a future that is so painful to live with that it outweighs our fear of death,
195
a structure made of nothing but words and thoughts, can torture us until we want to die.
196
And I lived that way for about 32 years.
197
And then I decided I was going to live in that, the awareness of that light.
Download App
Everything you need to speak fluently
AI PronunciationScore every sentence
IPA PracticeMaster every sound
VocabularyBuild your word bank
Vocab GameLearn while playing
📺 Same Channel
B21
The #1 Career Mistake Women Keep Making
Business EnglishWorking Adults
B21
5 Simple Ways To Crush Negativity in Your Mind
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B22
This 1 Skill Will Be A GAMECHANGER For Your Life | Mel Robbins Podcast Clips
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
C14
If You Feel Stuck In Survival Mode, Watch This
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
Take Back Control Of Your Past by Doing THIS!
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C12
How To WAKE UP And Find The Life You Really Want | Mel Robbins Podcast Clips
Business EnglishWorking Adults
B2The silent danger of sitting that no one talks about
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
✨ Recommend Video
B22
203 sentences
The Hidden Reason Life Feels So Hard… and the Tiny Shift That Changes Everything! | Mel Robbins
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B25
200 sentences
How to Get Unstuck | MOTIVATIONAL SPEECH
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B232
57 sentences
Psychology of People Who Dream Big But Do Nothing (How to Fix It)
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B22
79 sentences
How to Stay Present and Mindful in Everyday Moments
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
14 sentences
When You Notice This, Your Life Changes
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B2461 sentences
Watch this to Improve your Self-Concept and Get the Life of your Dreams! | S2E1
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
114 sentences
The Weekend Trap Keeping You Average (This Is How the Years Disappear)
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
128 sentences
Repeat This 6 Times — And Your Subconscious Starts Working for You | José Silva
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B219
11 sentences
Mel Robbins Reminder You NEED To Hear Everyday | Motivational Video
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
49 sentences
Oprah_ Why You Must Trust Your Intuition and Change Your Mind #intuition #selftrust #oprah #wisdom
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
109 sentences
Give me 5 minutes to show you WHY it's gonna be okay *no matter what*
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Why You Feel Stuck”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: sense, hemisphere, track. This video has 197 sentences and 1576 words to shadow. The speech runs for 10:15. The speaker talks at a natural 154 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 88% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| hemisphere noun | /ˈhɛmɪsfɪə/ | Half of the celestial sphere, as divided by either the ecliptic or the celestial equator . |
| anxiety noun | /æŋˈzaɪ.əti/ | An unpleasant state of mental uneasiness, nervousness, apprehension and obsession or concern about some uncertain event. |
| creativity noun | /kri.eɪˈtɪv.ᵻ.ti/ | The ability to use imagination to produce a novel idea or product. |
| ideal adjective | /aɪˈdi(ə)l/ | Pertaining to ideas, or to a given idea. |
| imagination noun | /ɪˌmæd͡ʒəˈneɪʃən/ | The image-making power of the mind; the act of mentally creating or reproducing an object not previously perceived; the ability to create such images. |
| ordinary adjective | /ˈɔɹdɪnɛɹi/ | Having regular jurisdiction; now only used in certain phrases. |
| tear verb | /tɛɹ/ | To rend (a solid material) by holding or restraining in two places and pulling apart, whether intentionally or not; to destroy or separate. |
| shoe noun | /ˈʃu/ | A protective covering for the foot, with a bottom part composed of thick leather or plastic sole and often a thicker heel, and a softer upper part made of… |
| photograph noun | /ˈfoʊ.təˌɡɹæf/ | A picture created by projecting an image onto a photosensitive surface such as a chemically treated plate or film, CCD receptor, etc. |
| closet noun | /ˈklɑzɪt/ | A small room within a house used to store clothing, food, or other household supplies. |
| fabulous adjective | /ˈfæbjʊləs/ | Of or relating to fable, myth or legend. |
| verbal adjective | /ˈvɜː.bəl/ | Of or relating to words. |
| mirror noun | /ˈmiɹɚ/ | A smooth surface, usually made of glass with reflective material painted on the underside, that reflects light so as to give an image of what is in front of it. |
| formal adjective | /ˈfɔɹməl/ | In accordance with established forms. |
| awareness noun | /əˈwɛɹ.nəs/ | The state or level of consciousness where sense data can be confirmed by an observer. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. |
| shut down verb | To close, terminate, or end; to stop operating, either permanently or temporarily. |
| walk through verb | To explain (something) to (someone), step by step. |
| add up verb | To take the sum of; to total. |
| come back verb | To return to a place. |
| get up verb | To move in an upward direction; to ascend or climb. |
| light up verb | To illuminate, to bring light to something, to brighten. |
| look out verb | To be vigilant and aware often as an imperative to alert a person to danger. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- How far would you like to go in the future?
- We're going to do time travel.
- I want to know what you're going to do.
- What kinds of shoes do you have?
- Is it their laughter you can hear?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was meant · have been taken · be terrified |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have happened · have been taken · you've done |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 35 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, you're, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: cloth /klɒθ/, hypothetical /ˌhaɪpəˈθɛtɪkəl/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: imagination /ɪˌmæd͡ʒəˈneɪʃən/, shoe /ˈʃu/, sheet /ʃit/, harsh /ˈhɑɹʃ/, instruction /ɪnˈstɹʌkʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: anxiety /æŋˈzaɪ.əti/, creativity /kri.eɪˈtɪv.ᵻ.ti/, imagination /ɪˌmæd͡ʒəˈneɪʃən/, ordinary /ˈɔɹdɪnɛɹi/, psychologist /ˌsaɪˈkɑl.ə.d͡ʒɪst/
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 hemisphere, anxiety, creativity.
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.