Shadowing Practice: Win Or Die Trying - Learn English Speaking with Video
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2 ,200 years ago, a young general named Xiang Yu stood on the bank of a river in China,
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with an army that was tired, hungry, and badly outnumbered.
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On the other side waited the army of Qin, the most feared fighting force of that time.
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His men had heard the stories, they knew what that army did to people who stood against it,
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and every soldier in that camp was doing the same quiet math in his head.
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If this goes wrong, how fast can I get back across the river?
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Xiang Yu could see it on their faces.
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So he took the whole army across, and the moment the last man stepped onto the far bank, he gave an order nobody expected.
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Sink the boats.
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Then he told them to smash the cooking pots.
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Then he had the huts they had been sleeping in burned to the ground.
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He handed each man enough food for three days, and not one bite more.
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Picture being one of those soldiers.
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You're standing on the wrong side of a river, you can't go home.
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You can't even cook a meal.
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And in three days the food runs out.
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The only food, the only shelter, and the only way home left in the whole world, was sitting inside the enemy camp.
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The great historian Sima Qian wrote that after that day, every one of Xiang Yu's men fought like he was worth ten.
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They won battle after battle, and they broke the army of Qin.
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In China they still have a saying that comes from that river.
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Break the pots and sink the boats.
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People say it when someone goes all in.
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Most of you are standing on that riverbank right now, with your boat tied up behind you, just in case.
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Win or die trying.
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No plan B.
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We live in a time that teaches the exact opposite of Xiang Yu.
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Everyone tells you to keep your options open.
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Have something to fall back on.
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Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
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It sounds smart, and for the money sitting in your bank account, maybe it is.
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For a dream, it's poison.
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Look at how most people actually live.
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They want to start a business, so they start it on weekends, half asleep, with one eye on the job they hate,
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and when the first month brings in nothing they say, well, at least I still have the job.
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They want to get in shape, so they sign up for the gym and keep the excuse ready at the same time.
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My knees, my schedule, my genetics.
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They want to be great at something, and they also want a way to tell everyone it didn't really matter if it doesn't work out.
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They're half in.
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And half in is the most tiring place a person can live,
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because you pay the full cost of trying and you never collect the reward of committing.
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There's an old proverb that says the man who chases two rabbits catches neither.
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People laugh at it because it sounds too simple.
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But go and watch a man running after two rabbits.
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He takes three steps left, two steps right, and he slows down every time he has to choose.
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Both rabbits get away while he's still deciding.
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That's your life with a plan B.
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Every time things get hard on plan A, a little voice reminds you that the other rabbit is still out there.
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So you slow down, you hesitate, you look over your shoulder, and the thing you really wanted gets away while you're looking.
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Be honest with yourself for a second.
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How many things have you started in the last few years?
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How many did you finish?
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You started with fire.
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You told people about it.
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You bought the equipment, the course, the shoes, and somewhere in the middle, when it got boring and painful and slow,
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you quietly walked back to the boat.
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Nobody saw it happen.
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There was no big dramatic moment.
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You just stopped showing up, and after a while you stopped talking about it,
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and now it's one more thing on the long list of things you used to want.
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You didn't fail.
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You left.
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Sun Tzu wrote about this in The Art of War, more than 2 ,000 years ago.
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He talked about a kind of ground he called, desperate ground.
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A place where the only way out is to fight.
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And he said something that sounds cruel until you understand it.
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Put your soldiers in a place where there is no escape, and they will choose death over running.
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And once they are ready to face death, there is nothing they can't do.
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Sun Tzu knew that most people only find their courage when they have to.
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Take away the exit, and a normal man finds a strength he never knew he had.
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Leave the exit open, and even a strong man starts staring at it.
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Picture two men going after the same thing, same talent, same money, same city.
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The first one has a safe job waiting for him if it goes wrong.
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The second one quit his, and told everyone he was never going back.
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Both of them hit a wall in the third month.
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The first man gets tired, looks at the job waiting for him, and starts to think about how nice a steady paycheck would feel.
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He doesn't quit that day.
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He just works a little less hard every week after that.
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The second man hits the same wall and has nothing to think about except how to climb it.
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So he climbs.
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A year later people look at the two of them and say, one was more gifted than the other.
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He wasn't.
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One of them just had nowhere to hide.
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The old Greeks told a story about the same thing.
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Odysseus had to sail his ship past the sirens, creatures who sang so beautifully that every
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Every sailor who heard them steered straight into the rocks and died.
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Odysseus wanted to hear the song, but he knew himself.
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He knew that when the song hit him he would be weak.
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So before they got close, while his head was still clear, he told his crew to tie him to the mast.
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He told them, Whatever I say, whatever I beg, do not untie me.
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And when the song came he screamed at them to let him go, and they didn't, and he lived.
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Pay attention to what he did.
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He didn't trust the version of himself that would show up in the hard moment.
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So he made the decision early, when he was strong, and the weak version of him never got a vote.
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That's what no plan B really means.
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You make the big decision on a good day, when you can see clearly, and you tie yourself to it,
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so that on the bad days you can't run.
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Because the bad days are coming.
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The day you're exhausted.
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The day someone you respect laughs at you.
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The day the money doesn't come in and the rent does.
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The day you look in the mirror and don't see any progress at all.
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That's when the song starts.
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That's when the backup plan starts sounding beautiful.
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And if the rope isn't already tied, you're going to steer straight into the rocks.
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And some of you don't just have a plan B.
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You've got the whole alphabet.
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Plan B is the job.
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Plan C is the other job.
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Plan D is going back to school.
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Plan E is your uncle's business that he's been talking about since you were 12.
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And Plan Z is moving back into your mom's house, sleeping in your childhood bed under the same posters,
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and telling everyone the economy is the problem.
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You've got so many backup plans you need an assistant just to keep track of them.
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The only plan that never gets any work done is Plan A.
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Throw the list away.
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Keep one.
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Pick the one thing.
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The one you think about when you can't sleep
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The one you get quietly jealous about when you see someone else doing it
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Write it down where you'll see it every single morning
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And then tell the people around you
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So that quitting actually costs you something
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Cancel the thing you've been keeping for when it doesn't work out
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Delete the excuse you've been saving
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And stop telling people you're trying something
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You're doing it
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Trying is a word people use so they can leave later without feeling like liars
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And if you're scared of picking the wrong thing, understand this.
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Most people never find out if they picked wrong, because they never stay long enough to know.
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They give a dream six weeks and call it a lesson.
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Give it two real years.
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Give it everything you have for two years, and then look at where you are.
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If it's truly the wrong road, you'll know, and you'll walk off at a stronger person with skills nobody can take away.
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But you have to walk it first.
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You can't judge a road from the parking lot, and the moment you do that people will tell you you're crazy.
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They'll say be realistic.
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They'll say what if it doesn't work.
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They'll ask you what your backup plan is, the same way they'd ask if you're wearing a seatbelt.
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Most of them mean well.
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They just can't imagine giving everything to one thing, because they've never done it.
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Listen to me.
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Realistic is the word people use for the dreams they gave up on.
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You don't need them to understand.
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You don't need them to clap.
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You need them to get out of the way, or stay and watch.
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Either one is fine.
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For years, doctors and experts said no human being could run a mile in under four minutes.
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Some said the heart would give out.
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Some said the body simply wasn't built for it.
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People had been trying for decades and coming up short,
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and the four -minute mile started to feel like a wall at the end of the world.
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Then on a cold windy day in May 1954, a young medical student named Roger Bannister ran it in 3 minutes and 59 .4 seconds.
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46 days later, a runner named John Landy broke Bannister's record.
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Within a few years many more men had run under 4 minutes.
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Nobody's legs got stronger in those 46 days.
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What changed was what they believed a human being could do.
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One man refused to accept the wall, and the wall turned out to be made of other people's opinions.
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The people telling you it can't be done are usually just telling you what they couldn't do, thank them, and keep going.
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And stop comparing your first chapter to someone else's 20th.
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You open your phone and see a guy your age with a car, a house and a business.
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and you feel like you're already too late.
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You don't see the eight years he spent broke.
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You don't see the nights he almost gave up.
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You see the ending and you think it was the whole story.
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Put the phone down.
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His race has nothing to do with yours.
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The only person you need to beat is the one who woke up in your bed this morning, and understands something else while we're here.
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Nobody is coming.
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Nobody is going to knock on your door and hand you the life you want.
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No boss is going to notice you one day and change everything.
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No rich stranger is going to read your messages and decide to make you famous.
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Your family can love you with everything they have and still not be able to carry you.
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If you're waiting to be rescued, you'll be waiting on that riverbank until you're old and gray.
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One night you're going to be sitting in your car at 2 in the morning, parked outside the place where you live,
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not ready to go inside yet.
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The engine's off.
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Your phone is on your lap.
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You're scrolling through other people's lives, and every single one of them looks like it's going better than yours.
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And right there, in that quiet, you're going to feel it.
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Nobody is going to fix this for you.
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It's just you in that car.
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Some people feel that and it crushes them.
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They go inside, go to sleep, and wake up exactly the same.
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But some people feel it, and something in them goes cold and calm.
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They sit up straight.
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They put the phone face down on the seat.
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And they decide, right there in a parked car at 2 in the morning, that it's going to be them.
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That's the night your life actually starts.
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A lot of people never get there, because they keep a plan B in the glove box.
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Some of you grew up being told to be careful.
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Don't take risks.
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Get the safe job.
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Don't embarrass the family.
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And the people who told you that loved you, they wanted you protected.
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But nobody ever told you what being careful costs.
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It costs you the life you were built for.
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You've been careful for so long that you don't even know what you'd be capable of if you stopped holding back.
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You've never seen yourself at full speed.
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And part of you is dying to find out.
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So why do you keep the boat?
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Most people think they keep a backup because they're being smart.
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That's the story they tell themselves.
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But if you dig under it you find fear.
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Fear dressed up in a suit and tie, calling itself wisdom.
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You keep the back up because you're scared you'll give everything, and still come up short.
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Because if you go all in and lose, you can't say you didn't really try.
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That's what scares people the most.
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A plan B protects your ego.
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If it fails, you get to say, well, I was never fully in it anyway.
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But think about what that costs you.
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You're giving up the only real shot you have at what you want, just so you'll have a good excuse if you fail
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You'd rather fail safely than succeed scared
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And the worst part is, the safe failure still hurts
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It just hurts slower
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It shows up ten years from now when you see someone else doing the thing you wanted
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And you know you could have done it
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And you know the only reason you didn't is that you never let yourself fully jump
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Fear always tells you the worst case is the end of the world
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Look at it plainly for once.
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What's the worst case?
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You lose some money.
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You lose some time.
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People laugh at you for a while.
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You have to start again.
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That's the monster you've been hiding from your whole life.
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It's a real cost.
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And it's survivable.
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Most of you have already been through worse and lived.
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The thing you can never get back is the years you spend standing on the bank, too scared to cross.
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Wake up.
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I'm talking to you.
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You've watched a hundred of these videos.
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You've nodded your head.
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You've felt the fire for ten minutes and then gone straight back to the exact same day you had yesterday.
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I don't want you to feel good after this.
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I want you to feel sick about the gap between what you say you want and what you actually do every day.
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Because that gap is your plan B.
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Every hour you spend on something that doesn't move you forward is an hour you're paying into the backup.
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You say you want it.
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Your calendar says you don't.
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So which one of you is lying?
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You or your calendar?
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Because I'll tell you what the calendar shows.
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It shows you saying yes to everything except the one thing that matters.
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It shows hours given to people who won't remember them next week.
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It shows a dream getting whatever energy is left over at the end of the day, when you're tired and empty and half asleep.
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You can't build something real on leftovers.
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The dream has to get the first and best hours of your day, or it's just a hobby you talk about.
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When you live with no plan B, you're going to get hurt.
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Let's not pretend otherwise.
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You'll fail in front of people.
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You'll lose money.
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You'll lose sleep.
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Some friends will drift away because you stopped showing up to the things you used to show up to.
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Some nights you'll lie in bed staring at the ceiling, wondering if you've ruined your whole life.
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That's part of the price.
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If someone sells you a version of this with no pain in it,
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they're lying to you, and they're probably trying to sell you something else too.
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Marcus Aurelius was the emperor of Rome, the most powerful man in the world, and his life was full of war, sickness and betrayal.
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In his private journal, which he never meant for anyone to read.
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He wrote a line that people still carry with them today.
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What stands in the way, becomes the way.
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He meant that the obstacle itself is the road.
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The thing blocking you, is the thing that's going to teach you how to get through.
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The rejection teaches you how to sell.
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The failed launch teaches you what people actually want.
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The injury teaches you patience.
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Every wall on plan A has a lesson behind it and the man with a plan B never learns any of them,
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because the minute he hits a wall, he turns around and walks over to the other road.
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When J .K.
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Rowling spoke to the graduates of Harvard in 2008, she told them about the years before anyone knew her name.
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She was a single mother with almost no money, as poor as you can be in Britain without being homeless,
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and by every normal measure she had failed.
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She told them that failure stripped away everything that wasn't important.
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She stopped pretending to be someone she wasn't, and she poured all of her energy into the only work that really mattered to her.
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She said that rock bottom became the solid ground she rebuilt her life on.
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When you have nothing left to fall back on, you finally stop falling back.
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Failure doesn't end people.
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Running ends people.
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You can fall a hundred times on the road to the thing you want, and still get there in the end.
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But every time you switch roads, you start again at mile one.
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Get used to hearing no. You're going to hear it from banks, from coaches, from clients, from people you thought were your friends.
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Every no feels personal at first, it burns.
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Then after the tenth one it stings.
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After the fiftieth, you barely feel it.
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And one day you realize that no is just a word people say before you find the person who says yes.
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The man with a plan B quits around the fifth no.
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The man with no plan B is still knocking on door number 200,
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because he decided a long time ago that he doesn't get to go home without it.
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So how do you actually live like this, day after day?
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Because the big decision happens on one morning, the rest of it happens on every morning after that.
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Start with one good day.
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Forget the perfect month.
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Forget the five -year plan.
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Just give me one day where you do exactly what you said you'd do.
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Wake up at the time you set.
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Do the important work before you touch your phone.
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Eat like someone who respects himself.
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Go to bed knowing you kept your word.
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Then do it again tomorrow.
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A great life is just a long line of good days stacked on top of each other,
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and one day you look up and the life is there.
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Keep small promises to yourself.
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This is the part nobody wants to hear because it's boring.
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If you say you'll do 10 push -ups, do 10, not 8.
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If you say you'll work for 1 hour, work for 1 full hour.
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Every time you break a small promise to yourself, you teach your brain that your word means nothing.
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And then when you make the big promise, win or die trying, your brain doesn't believe you.
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Why would it?
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You've lied to it a thousand times before.
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You have to earn your own trust back, one small promise at a time.
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Lao Tzu wrote that a journey of a thousand miles begins beneath your feet.
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The first step is right where you're standing.
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Forget the step you'll take next year when things calm down.
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Things never calm down.
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Take the step you can take tonight.
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Most people stare at the whole thousand miles and feel sick to their stomach.
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Look down instead.
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Take the one step that's in front of you.
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Then take the next one.
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You show up.
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Nothing happens.
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You show up again.
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Nothing.
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You show up tired, still nothing.
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You show up when your friends are out having fun, when it's your birthday, when you're sick of hearing yourself talk about it.
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Nothing, nothing, nothing.
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And then one day, something, one client, one win, one stranger who says, I saw what you did.
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And everyone around you says, wow, that happened so fast.
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And you just smile, because they weren't there for all the nothing.
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The nothing is where the real work gets done.
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The man with a plan B can't survive the nothing.
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Three months of nothing and he's gone.
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Back to the safe road.
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Telling everyone it wasn't meant to be.
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The man with no plan B doesn't have anywhere to go back to.
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So he stays.
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And staying is most of the secret.
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There's a point in every big goal where the excitement is gone and the finish line is nowhere in sight.
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The beginning was fun.
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People were cheering.
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You felt brave.
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Now it's month seven.
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Nobody is asking about it anymore.
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And the work feels exactly the same every day.
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This is the place where most dreams die.
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They don't die in a big explosion.
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They die quietly.
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In the boring middle.
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When nobody's watching.
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If you know that place is coming.
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It can't surprise you.
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When you get there.
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And you will.
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Tell yourself.
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This is the part where everyone else quits.
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Then stay one more day.
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And for the ones who keep saying they'll start on Monday. Which Monday?
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You've been saying that for three years.
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Monday has been waiting for you so long it filed a missing person report.
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Monday has seen your face on the side of a milk carton.
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Monday is starting to believe you were never real.
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Pick a Monday, or admit you're never coming.
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Start today.
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Today is the only day that ever actually shows up.
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Think about who's watching you, even when you're sure nobody is.
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Some of you have a little brother or sister who looks at you more than you'll ever know.
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Some of you have kids.
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Some of you will have kids one day.
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And those kids are going to learn what a man does by watching what you do when things get hard.
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They won't remember your speeches.
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They'll remember whether you quit.
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If they watch you start everything and finish nothing, that's what they'll think life is supposed to look like.
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If they watch you lose and get up and go again, year after year, until you finally win,
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they'll carry that in their bones for the rest of their lives.
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You're building more than your own future.
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You're writing the rules your family will live by long after you're gone.
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Think about your parents too.
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A lot of you have a mother or a father who gave something up so that you could have a chance.
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Maybe they worked jobs they hated for 20 years.
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Maybe they left a whole country behind.
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A language.
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A home.
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Everyone they knew.
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Maybe they just stayed up worrying about you more nights than you'll ever know.
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They didn't have a plan B.
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They had you and you're going to sit there with every chance they never had and play it safe?
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You owe it to them to swing with everything you've got.
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Plutarch tells a story about Alexander the Great.
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Alexander had marched his army further than almost any army in history, and as he was getting ready to march into India,
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his men were weighed down with treasure.
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Wagons full of gold and silver and fine clothes.
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Things they had taken from cities across half the world.
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And Alexander noticed something.
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His army had gotten slow.
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The same men who used to charge into battle, now moved carefully.
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Protecting what they had.
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They had something to lose now, and it was making them cautious.
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So one morning, after the wagons had been loaded for the march, Alexander set fire to his own wagons first,
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and then to the wagons of his closest friends.
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Then he ordered the rest of the army's wagons burned too.
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Plutarch says only a few of the men were angry.
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Most of them cheered, shared what they really needed with each other, and burned the rest themselves.
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Alexander understood that the things you're carrying can become the reason you stop moving.
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A comfortable life you're scared to lose can trap you just as hard as a poor one.
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So what are your wagons?
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Look at your life honestly.
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Maybe it's the comfortable job that pays just enough to keep you quiet.
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Maybe it's the apartment you can't really afford, which forces you to keep that job.
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Maybe it's the friends who like you exactly the way you are, and get uncomfortable every time you try to change.
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Maybe it's the four hours you lose every night to a screen.
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None of those things are evil on their own.
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But if they're keeping you from moving, they're wagons.
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And at some point you have to decide whether you want to keep carrying them, or whether you want to get where you're going.
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Picture yourself five years from now if nothing changes.
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Same job, same excuses, same plan B sitting in the drawer, still waiting for the day you'll need it.
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You're sitting in another meeting that has nothing to do with your life, nodding at someone who doesn't know your name.
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You go home, eat, scroll, sleep.
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You tell yourself next year.
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You've been telling yourself next year for a long time now.
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Look at that man clearly.
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He's not a bad person.
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He just never chose.
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And if you don't choose today, that's who's waiting for you.
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Responsibility is a word people run from.
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It sounds heavy. But listen.
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The moment you take full responsibility for your life, you get your power back.
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As long as it's someone else's fault, someone else is in charge of whether it gets better.
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Your boss, your ex, your parents, the economy, the people who never believed in you blame them if you want
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and you might even be right but being right won't pay your bills
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or change your body or build your business the only person who can do
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that is the one watching this right now so take it all of it your weight your bank account your relationships
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Your habits.
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Yours.
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Every bit of it.
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Go back to that proverb about the two rabbits, and picture the hunter it was talking about.
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He's out at dawn.
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He's hungry.
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His family is at home waiting for meat.
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He spots a rabbit in the grass and starts to creep forward, slow and quiet, the way he's done a thousand times before.
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Then out of the corner of his eye he sees a second rabbit, bigger than the first.
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He turns his head for one second.
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Just one.
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The first rabbit hears him and runs.
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He spins toward the big one, and it's already gone into the trees.
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He stands there in the cold with his bow in his hand and nothing to bring home.
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Nobody beat him.
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He was good enough.
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He was fast enough.
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He just couldn't decide which one he wanted to chase.
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That hunter is every person with a plan B, good enough to win, and walking home with nothing.
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Your family doesn't need you to be the most talented person in the room.
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They need you to choose one rabbit and run until you catch it.
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When you go all in, you're also deciding who you are.
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Heraclitus, an old
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Greek thinker, said that character is destiny.
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Who you are decides where you end up.
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If you're the kind of person who always keeps one foot out the door, you'll end up in a life full of half -finished things.
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If you're the kind of person who commits, you'll end up somewhere most people only talk about.
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Luck has much less to do with it than people want to believe.
461
It's mostly written by the kind of man you decide to be, every single morning, when nobody is watching.
462
Slow down with me for a minute.
463
There was an American admiral named James Stockdale, who spent more than seven years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
464
He was tortured many times.
465
He had no idea if he would ever see his wife and children again.
466
Years later, a writer named Jim Collins asked him which prisoners didn't make it out.
467
Stockdale's answer surprised him.
468
He said it was the optimists.
469
The ones who said, we'll be out by Christmas, and Christmas would come and go.
470
Then they'd say, we'll be out by Easter, and Easter would come and go.
471
And slowly their hearts broke, and some of them died.
472
Stockdale said the men who survived held on to two things at the same time.
473
They never lost faith that they would get out in the end and they face the brutal truth of where they were,
474
every single day, without lying to themselves about it.
475
That's what no plan B looks like when it's done right.
476
People think it means blind hope.
477
There's nothing blind about it.
478
You look straight at how bad it is.
479
You admit the money is low and the road is long and nobody's clapping, and you still don't leave.
480
You don't tell yourself it'll be easy by next month.
481
You tell yourself it might take years, and you're staying anyway.
482
Nietzsche wrote that a person who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
483
That's where all of this comes from.
484
If your reason is weak, you'll need a backup, because a weak reason can't carry you through a bad year.
485
If your reason is strong enough, you won't even think about the boats.
486
So ask yourself quietly, away from everyone, why do you really want this?
487
Dig past the money and the cars and the likes.
488
What's sitting under all of that?
489
Find it.
490
Hold on to it.
491
That's what you'll be standing on when everything else is shaking.
492
Seneca, the Roman writer, warned a friend in a letter, that while we keep putting things off, life runs right past us.
493
He wrote that almost 2 ,000 years ago, and nothing has changed.
494
You think you have time to keep the backup running, to test the waters, to wait for the right moment.
495
You don't have as much as you think.
496
Every year you spend half in is a year you don't get back.
497
One day you'll be old.
498
Maybe sitting on a porch.
499
Maybe lying in a hospital bed.
500
And you're going to look back.
501
You won't be counting the times you failed.
502
You'll be counting the times you didn't go all the way.
503
The doors you left half open.
504
The person you could have been if you'd just stop protecting yourself.
505
Make sure that old man has nothing to be ashamed of.
506
And there's a quiet kind of peace waiting for you on this road too.
507
It shows up early in the morning, before anyone else is awake, when you're already working and the house is silent.
508
You're tired, but there's no argument going on in your head anymore.
509
No debate about whether you should keep going.
510
That was settled the day you sank the boats.
511
All that's left is the work in front of you, and you doing it.
512
People spend their whole lives looking for that kind of calm.
513
You find it the moment you stop leaving yourself a way out.
514
So get up.
515
Don't stop because it hurts.
516
Don't stop because they laughed at you.
517
You stop when it's finished.
518
That's the only rule.
519
Learn the difference between tired and finished, and you'll pass almost everyone you know.
520
When Hannibal decided to take his army across the Alps to attack Rome, people thought it was madness,
521
elephants, snow and mountains, that no army that size had ever crossed.
522
The words people have linked to him for centuries are, I will either find a way, or make one.
523
Nobody knows for certain if he ever said them.
524
But he did cross.
525
He lost many men.
526
He lost many of his elephants and he came down out of those mountains into Italy anyway.
527
That's what no plan B sounds like.
528
If there's no road, you build one.
529
So stop waiting for the road to be ready.
530
It will never be ready.
531
The money will never feel like enough.
532
The timing will never feel perfect.
533
You will never feel fully prepared.
534
Go anyway.
535
Go tired.
536
Go scared.
537
Go before you have the answers.
538
The answers come while you're walking.
539
They never come while you're standing still on the riverbank, looking at a boat you should have sunk a long time ago.
540
This part of the road is lonely.
541
Get ready for that.
542
When you go all in, a lot of people won't understand you.
543
You'll say no to the parties.
544
You'll miss things.
545
Some people will say you've changed, like it's an insult.
546
You'll eat dinner alone more often than you'd like.
547
You'll have nights where it feels like you're the only person in the world still trying.
548
Good.
549
That's the chapter where you're becoming someone.
550
Every person who ever did something real, went through a stretch where nobody else could see what they were building.
551
You're in the dark right now, so that later you can stand in the light, and know you earned every inch of it.
552
Lonely is temporary.
553
Regret stays.
554
And when it gets really quiet, when the calls stop and the invitations dry up, don't read that as a sign you chose wrong.
555
Read it as proof you're finally serious.
556
The crowd always thins out on the hard part of the mountain.
557
That's how you know you're climbing.
558
The people who belong in your life will find their way back to you later, and the ones who don't,
559
were never going to walk this far with you anyway.
560
Keep your head down, keep your promises, and keep moving up, one step at a time.
561
Write these rules on the inside of your skull.
562
Your word is everything.
563
If you say it, you do it, even when nobody would ever find out.
564
A man whose word means nothing to himself, will never have a word that means anything to anyone else.
565
Your time is not for sale to every distraction that asks for it.
566
Guard your mornings.
567
Know what you're doing tomorrow before you go to sleep tonight.
568
A man with no schedule gets used by everyone who has one.
569
Watch your money like it's your freedom, because it is.
570
Every dollar you waste trying to look like you've already made it, is a dollar you take away from actually making it.
571
Live smaller than you can afford for a while.
572
Let people think you're broke.
573
Broke for two years is better than broke forever.
574
Choose your circle carefully.
575
The people around you are either pulling you toward the goal or pulling you back to the boat.
576
You don't need to hate anyone.
577
You just need to notice who makes you feel small for wanting more, and spend less time with them.
578
Find people who are also all in.
579
Sit at their table.
580
Their standards will become yours faster than you think.
581
Make friends with pain.
582
Do one hard thing every day on purpose, so that when the hard days come on their own, they find you already used to them.
583
The early run in the cold.
584
The phone call you've been avoiding for a week.
585
Pain you choose makes you stronger for the pain you don't get to choose.
586
And protect your name.
587
Be the person people can count on, even the ones who don't like you.
588
One day the work will speak for you, and you want your name standing next to it clean go back to that river in China.
589
2 ,000 years later, nobody remembers the names of most of those soldiers.
590
But people still remember what they did when the boats went down.
591
They remember that a tired, outnumbered army looked at a hopeless situation and decided it wasn't going home any other way.
592
That's what gets remembered about anyone.
593
Nobody tells stories about a backup plan.
594
They tell stories about what someone did when there wasn't one.
595
And understand this before you go.
596
No plan B doesn't mean no thinking.
597
It doesn't mean you keep smashing your head into the same wall the same way for 10 years and call it loyalty.
598
Xiang Yu didn't stop thinking after he sank those boats.
599
He fought 9 separate battles, and each one asked something different of him.
600
You can change your methods a hundred times.
601
Change the product, change the gym, change the strategy.
602
Change the city if you have to.
603
Change the road as often as you need.
604
Just never change the destination.
605
The plan can bend all at once.
606
The goal stays where you put it.
607
So look behind you right now.
608
Find the boat.
609
You already know exactly what it is.
610
The excuse you've been saving, the door you've been keeping open just in case, the voice that keeps whispering that you can always go back.
611
Sink it.
612
Smash the pots.
613
Take three days of food and walk toward the thing you want with nowhere else to go.
614
Win or die trying.
615
No plan B.
616
And if you do it right, you'll find out the dying part was never about your body.
617
It was the old you.
618
The one who always kept a way out who had to go.
619
Let him die on that riverbank.
620
Then go win.
621
Win or die trying.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Win Or Die Trying”. This video has 621 sentences and 6469 words to shadow. The speech runs for 35:07. The speaker talks fast, about 184 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 91% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| rabbit noun | /ˈɹæbɪt/ | A mammal of most genera of the family Leporidae, with long ears, long hind legs and a short, fluffy tail. (Those of the larger kind are instead called hares) |
| backup noun | /ˈbækˌʌp/ | A reserve or substitute. |
| wagon noun | /ˈwæɡən/ | A heavier four-wheeled (normally horse-drawn) vehicle designed to carry goods (or sometimes people). |
| sink verb | /ˈsɪŋk/ | To descend or submerge (or to cause to do so) into a liquid or similar substance. |
| quietly adverb | /ˈkwaɪ.ɪt.li/ | Producing little or no noise. |
| nowhere adverb | /ˈnoʊ.(h)wɛɹ/ | In no place. |
| pot noun | /pɑt/ | A flat-bottomed vessel (usually metal) used for cooking food, possibly excluding saucepans (see usage notes). |
| calendar noun | /ˈkæl.ən.də/ | Any system by which time is divided into days, weeks, months, and years. |
| bore verb | /boɹ/ | To inspire boredom in somebody. |
| stare verb | /stɛɚ/ | To look fixedly (at something). |
| lesson noun | /ˈlɛs.ən/ | A section of learning or teaching into which a wider learning content is divided. |
| carefully adverb | /ˈkɛɹf(ə)li/ | With care; attentively, circumspectly. |
| hungry adjective | /ˈhʌŋ.ɡɹi/ | Affected by hunger; having the physical need for food. |
| hunter noun | /ˈhʌntɚ/ | One who hunts game for sport or for food; a huntsman or huntswoman. |
| asleep adjective | /əˈsliːp/ | In a state of sleep; also, broadly, resting. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| show up verb | To appear, arrive, or attend, especially suddenly or erratically. |
| find out verb | To discover, as by asking or investigating. |
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. |
| get back verb | Return to where one came from. |
| calm down verb | To become less excited, intense, or angry. |
| come up verb | To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly. |
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. |
| fall back on verb | To turn to as a substitute; to rely on as a backup. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- You can't even cook a meal.
- Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
- How many things have you started in the last few years?
- How many did you finish?
- You've got the whole alphabet.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | he's been talking · you've been keeping · you've been saving |
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | If it's truly the wrong road, you'll know · If you're waiting to be rescued, you'll be · If you say you'll do |
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to want · used to show · used to charge |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | they've never done · You've been · You've never seen |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 204 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, you'll, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: beneath /bɪˈniːθ/, mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/, tenth /tɛnθ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: smash /smæʃ/, shake /ˈʃeɪk/, shelter /ˈʃɛltə/, destination /dɛstɪˈneɪʃən/, explosion /ɛkˈsploʊ.ʒən/
- Long words — get the stress right: temporary /ˈtɛmp(əˌɹ)ɛɹi/, destination /dɛstɪˈneɪʃən/, uncomfortable /ʌnˈkʌm.fɚ.tə.bl̩/, mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/, beautifully /ˈbju.tɪ.fə.li/
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 rabbit, backup, wagon.
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.