Shadowing Practice: Why Your Brain Sabotages Your Own Happiness - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Lots of us go through life wanting different things.

The right city, the right job, the right romantic partner.

And then sometimes, we get it all.

We're ecstatic, but soon enough, we get the nagging suspicion that what we thought we wanted was not really what we actually wanted.

After all, if it was, wouldn't we be happy?

A Stanford professor has a name for this malaise.

He calls it the all -will -be -well fallacy.

This is the belief that if you get the right job, the right relationship, the right number in your bank account, you'll be happy.

But when you look back at your own life, have you noticed how achieving your goals can fail to produce lasting happiness?

Why is this?

Today, I'm going to tell you about four mental traps that can leave you feeling adrift and unhappy,

even if you look like you're on the right track.

And I'll share how you can build a life that's more satisfying.

Let me explain.

The year is 1973.

A young engineering student named Dave Evans is waiting in line at a store.

A television is playing in the corner.

The news is on, and the anchor is talking about the skyrocketing price of gasoline.

Dave sees the story, and he decides, right there, he's going to solve the energy crisis.

He gets a master's degree in thermoscience, a branch of engineering focused on engines and power systems.

He graduates in 1976, ready to change the world.

And then he runs into a problem.

He cannot find a job doing what he wants to do.

Dave spends four years looking for work.

He starts a small solar energy company.

It fails.

He's broke, he's frustrated, and he's holding a welding torch one afternoon when the phone rings.

The guy said, my name is so -and -so, and I'm from Apple Computer, we'd like to talk to you.

And I said, no, you want to talk to the Dave Evans at Hewlett -Packard, that's the one who likes computers.

I don't, and I hung up.

14 interviews and a lunch with Steve Jobs later, Dave takes the job at Apple.

He helps to design the very first mouse.

He works on something called desktop publishing before anyone knew what that was.

Looking back on that time with the benefit of hindsight, it's easy to see the importance of the work that Dave and his colleagues were doing.

It was the beginning of a revolution in how people use technology.

By any measure, it was important, meaningful work.

But at the same time, something nagged at him.

What I was doing was making stuff.

I mean, if I didn't do it, somebody else will.

So, is that all there is?

Is that all there is?

Dave had set out to save the world from oil.

Instead, he was building plastic things with wires in them, as he puts it.

He was successful, but the success didn't feel the way he'd been told it would feel.

Years later, Dave left Apple and became a professor at Stanford University.

He started teaching the art of design thinking.

It was a method of problem solving that he had used to build products.

Now, he was applying it to something much harder, helping people to design a life that felt meaningful to them.

While speaking to a room full of accountants in Kansas City, he met a woman whose question would stay with him for years.

Her name was Allison she ran a small business doing accounting and taxes for about 50 other small businesses.

She was happily married, two children, three -bedroom house.

She had exactly everything that she had ever tried to get in her life.

She really thought she did it all right.

She was really stuck.

This is that all -will -be -well mindset I mentioned earlier.

Once I build a stable business, all will be well.

Once I own the house, all will be well.

Once the kids are settled, all will be well.

It's a mindset that can keep you motivated and moving forward.

But Dave says this is a trap, one of the first we fall into when we're trying to build a meaningful life.

We think there's an ideal version of ourselves waiting to be unlocked, if only we can find the right key.

The truth is, all of us contain more possibilities than any single lifetime can hold.

There are more versions of you than you will ever have time to experience, which means there is no one apex of the pyramid,

no one ideal version of your life.

The goal is impossible.

Yet, we carry this idea around like a moral obligation.

We believe that we owe it to ourselves to become everything we're capable of.

The second trap that many of us fall into is the idea that a meaningful life requires making an impact,

changing the world, leaving a mark that outlasts us.

Now, you might ask, why is this a trap?

Isn't it a good thing to want to do something that endures, something that's remembered?

The answer is, of course that's a good thing.

It's just a very, very hard goal to accomplish.

And even when you manage to pull it off, the feeling of satisfaction that you get from that impact tends to fade.

You invent a groundbreaking gadget.

You win an Oscar.

You write a best -selling book.

And it isn't long before the world asks you, what have you done for me lately?

Resting your entire self -worth on your ability to make an impact can be risky.

Trying to have an impact can also lead to a third mental trap, the belief that radical change will inevitably make your life better.

Dave says this trap prompts people to quit their jobs

and uproot their lives seeking a version of themselves that feels fundamentally different.

But a few weeks or months or years after they make this big change, many people find that the novelty fades.

They wake up in a new place, still themselves, still asking the same questions.

The fourth and perhaps most dangerous trap is one that many of us fall into.

It's the conviction that when something isn't working, you just need to do more.

Work harder, sleep less, push through.

Dave fell into this trap early in his career.

He had three children and a 75 -hour work week.

He had trained himself to survive on just three or four hours of sleep every night.

He thought he had it all figured out.

But one Saturday morning, he had a realization.

I'm sitting in the family room, drinking a cup of coffee, and I heard my then three -year -old son, Robbie, say to his mother,

Mom, can we play with Dad today, or are he just going to fall asleep in the chair again?

When I was Robbie's age, my dad was gone because he died.

When Robbie's Robbie's age, his dad's gone because he's asleep.

Dave knew in that moment that pushing harder was not working.

Something had to give, and he didn't want it to be his health or his relationship with his family.

So, to recap, trap number one is believing that there is a single ideal version of yourself just waiting to be uncovered.

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Trap number two, you have to make an impact on the world to be on the right path.

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Trap number three, radical change will make everything better.

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And finally, trap number four, if something is not working, push harder.

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Four beliefs that feel productive, each one is a trap.

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Now, maybe you're saying, okay, so if these beliefs are a trap, how do I avoid them?

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What's the alternative?

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Dave says that before you can figure out how to get where you want to go,

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you have to figure out if you're asking the right question.

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He calls this wayfinding.

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When you can't know what you're doing,

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you can't navigate like a GPS would because you don't have a map and you don't have all the information.

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You have to wayfind.

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And wayfinding means taking one step at a time, knowing something about the direction you're going, trying a few things, you know,

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tuning it up and then doing it again and doing it again.

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And life is like that.

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So instead of what's the meaning of life, ask yourself, of how might I live a more meaningful life right now?

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That's a question you can actually do something with.

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You can try small experiments, see how they go, adjust your path accordingly.

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Another simple tool that Dave teaches begins with just two words, got to.

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Most of us approach our lives through a language of obligation.

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I've got to finish this project.

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I've got to attend this meeting.

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I've got to answer these emails.

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I've got to get the kids ready.

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Dave calls this the got -to mindset, where everything becomes a box to check before you get to the thing that actually matters.

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He suggests a shift in framing from got -to to get -to.

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I get to do this work.

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I get to be in this meeting.

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I get to pick up my kids.

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Same day, same obligations, but a completely different experience of being alive.

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Dave tells a story about his book editor who was working from home one day

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while her child was making noise in the other room.

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She caught herself thinking, I've got to get this kid to quiet down.

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But then she stopped and she told herself a different story.

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I get to work from home, which means I get to be in the presence of this very alive child.

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That shift took just two seconds and it changed how the rest of her day felt.

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Dave calls this practice moment making.

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It's the discipline of inhabiting the life

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you're already living instead of racing toward a future destination where meaning is supposed to begin.

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We just need to slow down long enough to notice

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that the life we're rushing through is already full of moments worth being present for.

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Because it's a term for what happens when you spend your whole life racing.

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Destination sickness.

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Dave heard this term many years ago when talking with a nurse in an intensive care unit.

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We have all these highly accomplished people.

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And it was always when I finished the degree, get the grad degree, get the good job, make partner, make my first million.

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And it's always the next thing will make me happy.

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And some of the people here, the ones in their mid -50s, who've burned their heart out and now they're actually going to die,

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they suddenly realize there is no next thing.

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And then they look back at all the things they ran through and they realize they missed the whole thing.

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Most of them die in despair.

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The meaning of life is rarely found at a single destination.

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It's in the moments we race through trying to get there.

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So instead of asking, what's the meaning of my life, come up with three different versions of yourself and prototype each path.

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You might find a new version that you love, or you might discover that the path you were on was not so bad after all.

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Whatever you choose doesn't have to be the one perfect path for you.

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As Dave says, there's more than one of you in there.

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The question is, which version do you want to be right now?

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If this video helped you see your life in new ways,

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you can find many more conversations about meaning and purpose on the Hidden Brain audio podcast.

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You can find it on Apple, Spotify, or hiddenbrain .org.

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I'm Shankar Vedantam.

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See you soon.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “Why Your Brain Sabotages Your Own Happiness”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: Dave, trap, version. This video has 162 sentences and 1970 words to shadow. The speech runs for 10:56. The speaker talks fast, about 180 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
trap noun	/tɹæp/	A machine or other device designed to catch (and sometimes kill) animals, either by holding them in a container, or by catching hold of part of the body.
meaningful adjective	/ˈmiː.nɪŋ.fl̩/	Having meaning, significant.
belief noun	/bɪˈliːf/	Mental acceptance of a claim as true.
ideal adjective	/aɪˈdi(ə)l/	Pertaining to ideas, or to a given idea.
destination noun	/dɛstɪˈneɪʃən/	The place set for the end of a journey or to which something is sent; place or point aimed at.
obligation noun	/ˌɑ.blɪˈɡeɪ.ʃn̩/	The act of binding oneself by a social, legal, or moral tie to someone.
mindset noun	/ˈmaɪn(d)ˌsɛt/	A way of thinking; an attitude or opinion, especially a habitual one.
solve verb	/sɒlv/	To find an answer or solution to a problem or question; to work out.
asleep adjective	/əˈsliːp/	In a state of sleep; also, broadly, resting.
radical noun	/ˈɹædɪkəl/	A root (of a number or quantity).
accomplish verb	/əˈkɑm.plɪʃ/	To finish successfully.
fade verb	/feɪd/	To hit the ball with the shot called a fade.
rush verb	/ɹʌʃ/	To hurry; to perform a task with great haste, often not properly or without thinking carefully.
stable noun	/ˈsteɪ.bəl/	A building, wing or dependency set apart and adapted for lodging and feeding (and training) ungulates, especially horses.
audio adjective	/ˈɔ.di.oʊ/	Focused on audible sound, as opposed to sight.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
figure out verb	To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
come up with verb	To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it.
go through verb	To travel from one end of something to the other.
live through verb	To survive a difficult period or event
move forward verb	To cause to make progress.
pick up verb	To lift; to grasp and raise.
push through verb	To force (legislation or a plan) to be passed or agreed to or a decision to be reached.
run through verb	To summarise briefly.

Sentences worth repeating

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

After all, if it was, wouldn't we be happy?
I don't, and I hung up.
That's a question you can actually do something with.
I've got to finish this project.
I've got to attend this meeting.

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 it was, wouldn't we · if I didn't do it, somebody else will
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	been told · are settled · be unlocked
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	one who likes · experience, which means · home, which means
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	have you done · who've burned

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 38 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, I've, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: destination /dɛstɪˈneɪʃən/, obligation /ˌɑ.blɪˈɡeɪ.ʃn̩/, accomplish /əˈkɑm.plɪʃ/, rush /ɹʌʃ/, satisfaction /sætɪsˈfækʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: destination /dɛstɪˈneɪʃən/, experiment /ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/, satisfaction /sætɪsˈfækʃən/, accordingly /əˈkɔɹ.dɪŋ.li/, inevitably /ɪˈnɛvɪtəbli/

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 trap, meaningful, belief.

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 →

Shadowing Practice: Why Your Brain Sabotages Your Own Happiness - Learn English Speaking with Video

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