Shadowing Practice: you have to let yourself go - Learn English Speaking with Video
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208 sentences
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I think that the main thing that stops us from sort of building an identity
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that we actually resonate with is how much we get attached and stuck on our unchanging self.
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And what I mean by that is not, you know,
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just like not liking yourself when you're changing or not liking what you're changing to or not liking yourself at the moment,
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but not being able to let yourself go.
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let yourself change you know embracing your own change
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and i've been wanting to make a video on this for a minute
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because i feel like it's something
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that's super prevalent especially in this current generation not being able to allow yourself to change
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and i feel like i was like this for
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so long i've been like this i feel like like up until recently
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which i hate to say because i like to think
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that i've been pretty self -conscious of myself for a while
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but up until recently i didn't really allow myself at least in mind to change
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and i didn't understand why
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and it's a lot of mental conditioning
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i was reading a book called becoming supernatural it kind of highlights a lot of the the points of
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that it's essentially um saying
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that we kind of get addicted to who we are we
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get addicted to the chemicals of our experiences of the past we get addicted to who we were um
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and we just loop those over and over again
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and i don't know if many of you believe in like manifestation
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or anything like that but even on a fundamental level you know
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if you're constantly playing the same thoughts and same actions
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and reliving those experiences your body's gonna keep thinking you're going through
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that it's it's almost inescapable and it's almost like you know how can you change
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when you know the situation's occurring at the moment how can you change
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when you're reliving the exact experience that got you to the point you're in right now
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and i'm not saying just forget you know that's hard to forget even in my experience like
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there's still stuff that i hold on to that i'm constantly trying to work on
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things in the past that i didn't necessarily like how it went or
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i feel like i could have handled better
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i feel like i just needed a little more insider maturity to get through
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but in saying that i realized
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that you know no change is going to occur unless i
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let myself go unless we let ourselves develop unless we make a change
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and i'm not saying like intentionally change yourself i'm not saying forget who you are
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and not neglect not or neglect who you were
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because i feel like once we do
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that i feel like you know on a fundamental level it might be easy to forget yourself
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or to act different i can go and act like a completely different person
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but i feel like it's those those cycles
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i think another youtuber named ryan he talks about cycles all the time it's like the ups and downs
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but once we start feeling somewhere once we start vibing a certain way we start looping those same thoughts over
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and over again and again stuck in those same thoughts we relive those same experiences
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and we fail to grow as people i think the first step in letting yourself go the first thing
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that i did was stop being ashamed of my own change
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and wanting to get better
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you know stop being ashamed of uh trying new things for
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myself like i i've talked about in the video like how i do affirmations at first
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i was like why would i do
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that like why would i talk to myself why would i say anything to myself like
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that i feel like that's kind of desperate
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but like one thing i realized like you can't be ashamed of loving yourself
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that's one thing you can't be ashamed of yourself
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you know like you can be ashamed of your actions this is
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that and the other
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but your betterment i feel like that's something you have to sort of hold on to
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and appreciate regardless
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and that's i think that's how i got to the point
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i'm at right now i feel greater than i ever did
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and i read out my list of affirmations
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i say stuff every morning every night i used to do three times a day
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but you know time is just not really on my side
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i get i leave the house my dorm at like 8 a .m and i come back at like 10
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so it gets kind of hard some days but on those days where i can you know it's important to
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reinforce those things in your head because as i said before like those negative loops
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those negative cycles of thought you know you're constantly thinking these negative things over
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and over again um they have to be combated by something
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or replaced by something you know you can't replace a bad habit with absence
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you have to fill it in with something good i feel like like you're not gonna stop you know smoking
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or something and just instead just sit still
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You know, you're going to find something else to fill that vacancy.
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And I feel like a lot of people, we have vacancies inside ourselves.
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And we like to fill it up with our previous experiences and our own inaction.
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I think people get stuck and stagnant.
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And I always use the quote that he who thinks his journey is over is true to us.
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And that's what I mean.
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We're not letting ourselves continue our journey.
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we accept the connotation we get comfortable with a connotation
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and it's not really comfort within who we are it's comfort with an idea comfort with a a definition
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like i used to think myself
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that it was more comfortable to have definition to have
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that not to say that i don't have a definition for myself at all but but to say that
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being comfortable with myself while i'm changing and i see a couple people like
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that that little um
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that bit in my last video i talked about how you have to be comfortable with yourself
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while you're changing not just at the beginning or end you can't be too comfortable at those sides either
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and when i say comfort i don't mean like don't be comfortable in a sense like don't be happy
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i mean don't be comfortable in a sense that you think that's the end
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you know don't be stagnant i think there's so much more to life and so much more that we can
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experience as people
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that we fail to truly appreciate just out of you know our inability to realize our own change
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and realize our own potential to change i think
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that a lot of people can do a lot of great things i see great things all the time and
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you know i'm starting i'm starting to think i was right about
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that a little bit not necessarily
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because of my own growth mind y 'all i thank y 'all
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so much i couldn't express in words how how grateful i am to have y 'all aboard
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and or with me like i don't really know it's a crazy experience
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but like i've been telling my friends who are kind of creative
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or do anything like just put your stuff out there just do i've been putting stuff out for two years
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and like it's been great every every second i just love doing it
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but it's about putting yourself out there
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and allowing you know yourself to change with it yourself to change with the circumstance
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I feel like it's too easy to not do anything.
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Too easy to go through your life and, you know, realize that you could have done something else.
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Or that maybe your passion was attainable.
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It's about letting yourself go to explore.
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but also being conscious
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and mindful of the implications of your actions you know
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it's it's real easy for me to say
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you know let go acting like people don't have you know their day -to -day stuff
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i have my day -to -day stuff i can't
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you can't let go of your full identity what i mean is let go of the parts of yourself
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that seek out change you know
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you can't run from it i think a lot of times we run from our problems without realizing
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that we're running from ourselves you know like we're running from the parts of ourselves
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that need to heal from certain things
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like i myself i don't want to get into the detail i feel like i'm already pretty vulnerable but
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you know there's there's things in my life that i think i have yet to overcome that i still need to
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and i'm not really ashamed of you know like i'm still working towards it
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and i'm finding new ways to work towards you know it's about infronting your problems in a way
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that makes you feel comfortable but also like create enough change
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because it's one thing to just acknowledge the issue like acknowledging the issue in mind knowing
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that something's wrong is the first step
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it's a beautiful step i think that a lot of people don't even get to
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that step so if you like
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if you get there you're halfway to the battle man but you know that other half
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that figuring out the application and figuring out yourself enough to change and grow from it
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is entirely different which is why i stress the importance of sort of knowing yourself
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and being present enough with yourself to know how you feel about certain things i think a lot of our
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traumas
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and stresses can be mitigated with how we feel about them how we feel about how we connotate
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it in our mind like i used to have a big fear of public speaking
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i used to have a big fear not necessarily fear of just expressing myself in public the way I am.
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And I think a lot of my friends and a lot of people I see on a daily basis can attest that,
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you know, as the years have progressed, as I've been developing, like, my personality, I feel like shines through regardless of the situation.
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Of course, I'm mindful, but, you know, like, in not being ashamed of being yourself, like, a lot of the stress of,
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like, social interaction kind of falls out the window.
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not saying that i'm not mindful of like who i'm talking to how i'm talking to them but
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in finding yourself and which i don't think i've done you know i think it's a continuous thing but
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in finding out the pieces and parts of yourself
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i think it opens doors to more pieces and parts just like how gratitude breeds more gratitude
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you know finding stuff to be grateful for finding things to appreciate it puts you on
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that that sort of vibration of gratefulness and gratitude and love
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and if you express
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that to yourself that's literally all you can exude i think
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i said a quote in another video like loving yourself
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so much everything you see everything you interact with is an exemplar of
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that love you gotta put yourself out there for yourself
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you have to put yourself out there to yourself show yourself what you're capable of in a way
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and show yourself
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that you know it's maybe
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it's not maybe let me prove myself wrong at this point like a couple of days ago
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i'm constantly doing stuff i've been trying to do stuff just to get myself on my comfort zone and
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express myself in ways that i'm probably haven't done before like i went to a poetry workshop
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where initially i was just like i just like poetry i'm gonna go
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and um just sit in and listen to other people say
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but once i got there i just started writing i wrote something and you know I performed it.
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I was nervous the whole time, but I did it.
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Like I was happy that I did it at the end of the day.
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Even if I stuttered once, stuttered twice, you know, I got my message out there.
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I got what I wanted to get out of it.
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And I showed myself, you know, regardless of my anxiety and how I feel about the situation, I can still move forward.
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It's not about how you feel.
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It's about how you react to your feelings how react you react to the parts of yourself that are kind of
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scared of the situation and i say all this in moderation you know i'm not saying
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go into some super scary situation and just be a real tough guy oh my god you can do anything
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of course be mindful be smart
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but also be courageous you know know what serves you
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and what doesn't but also know what has potential to serve you
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i mean i feel like the biggest thing we do is serve ourselves it all starts with uh letting yourself go
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being there for yourself treating yourself like a friend enough to the point where you know
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you allow the parts of yourself to change you know it's okay to grow it's okay to not have differentness
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and i think once i kind of got to
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that point in my own development
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that i was like okay with seeing parts of myself change
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because even now i still hold on to stuff you know i'm saying this stuff
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but like you know truth be told of course
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i'm still working on it that's kind of how i'm able to articulate it to the to an extent
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it's kind of my way of piecing it together
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you know of course there's still parts of myself
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that i hold on to that that seek out change
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but i'm becoming more conscious of it i'm becoming more present with how i feel
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because even if it's a part of myself that i know seeks out change
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you know i still love it enough to let it go
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i still appreciate what it does for me i appreciate you know feelings happy
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and sad life's only a reference to dark light is only a reference to dark
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you know you have to be mindful of how you are connotating certain things in your head
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you know things are bad you know some things are bad some things are good
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but if it's constantly looping in your head i feel like
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sometimes you have to use pascal's gamble you know sometimes you have to be a little delusional i don't know
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if this is 100 great advice you know but you have to let yourself flourish
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let yourself develop you know i'm not saying cut everybody off and start a whole new life
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i'm saying you know cut your old version of yourself off
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to the point where there's new life inside of you and
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if uh if you made it this far in the video i don't know thank you so much honestly
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and just the way my channel has grown in the past couple of days is kind of crazy to me still
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but I'm gonna continue just putting out the same same kind of stuff
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but thank you like I'm
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so grateful for all y 'all
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you know much more than appreciative of all the comments y 'all leave
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I read like every single one I literally try not to let a comment go in turn
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but you know
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if i miss one i'm sorry just thanks again uh
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i hope you all are doing great just make sure y
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'all are letting yourselves develop letting yourself go letting yourselves flourish letting yourselves be you
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “you have to let yourself go”. This video has 208 sentences and 2683 words to shadow. The speech runs for 15:40. The speaker talks at a natural 171 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| ashamed adjective | /əˈʃeɪmd/ | Feeling shame or guilt. |
| comfort noun | /ˈkʌm.fət/ | Contentment, ease. |
| loop noun | /luːp/ | A length of thread, line or rope that is doubled over to make an opening. |
| necessarily adverb | /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/ | Inevitably; of necessity. |
| regardless adverb | /ɹɪˈɡɑɹd.lɪs/ | Without attention to warnings or indications of bad consequences. |
| grateful adjective | /ˈɡɹeɪtf(ə)l/ | Of a person or their actions, feelings, etc.: expressing gratitude or appreciation; appreciative, thankful. |
| conscious adjective | /ˈkɑn.ʃəs/ | Alert, awake; with one's mental faculties active. |
| react verb | /ɹiːˈækt/ | To act in response. |
| gratitude noun | /ˈɡɹæ.tɪ.tud/ | The state of being grateful. |
| yourselves | /jəˈsɛlvz/ | You (plural), used to intensify the subject as the group addressed. |
| addict noun | /ˈæd.ɪkt/ | A person who is addicted, especially to a harmful drug. |
| occur verb | /əˈkɜː/ | To happen or take place. |
| poetry noun | /ˈpoʊ.ə.tɹi/ | Literature composed in verse or language exhibiting conscious attention to patterns and rhythm. |
| fundamental adjective | /ˌfʌn.dəˈmɛn.təl/ | Related to a foundation, base, or basis; serving as a foundation. |
| acknowledge verb | /əkˈnɑ.lɪd͡ʒ/ | To admit the knowledge of; to recognize as a fact or truth; to declare one's belief in. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. | |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| fall out verb | To come out of something by falling. | |
| find out verb | To discover, as by asking or investigating. | |
| get out of verb | To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of. | |
| get through verb | /ɡɛt ˈθɹu/ | To overcome; to endure. |
| move forward verb | To cause to make progress. | |
| put out verb | To blind (eyes). |
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 | i've been wanting · i've been telling · i've been putting |
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to do · used to think · used to have |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | i've been · i've talked · it's been |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | be combated · is let · can be mitigated |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 86 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, don't, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: ashamed /əˈʃeɪmd/, conscious /ˈkɑn.ʃəs/, flourish /ˈflʊ̈ɹ.ɪʃ/, passion /ˈpæʃən/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/
- Long words — get the stress right: necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, fundamental /ˌfʌn.dəˈmɛn.təl/, anxiety /æŋˈzaɪ.əti/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, interaction /ˌɪn.təˈɹæk.ʃən/
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 ashamed, comfort, loop.
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.