Luyện nói tiếng Anh bằng Shadowing qua video: Your Imagination Won't Fix Your Life

You're thinking, okay, if I had done this, then this would be different.

If I had done this, then this would be different.

Your mind is literally spending your problem -solving energy to change the past into a hypothetical present.

And then the question becomes, where do you go from here?

You can't go anywhere from here because that's not real, it's a fantasy.

Hey y 'all, in today's video, we're breaking down how you can accidentally prevent yourself from improving in life

because you're too busy solving problems in a fantasy world instead of the real world.

This is something that a lot of people have been asking about for Mental Illness Awareness Week, and I originally made this video as part of Dr. K's Guide to Depression.

It's something that I noticed a lot of my patients would do.

They'd be too busy solving the problems in their head in order to actually solve the problems in the real world.

The Guide to Depression is a piece of Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health, and if y 'all want to learn more, check out the link in the description below.

Let's talk a little bit about something that I call the fantasy trap.

For some people who describe themselves as depressed, what they really do is like have a bunch of regret.

The quality of their depression is about regret over past actions.

So they kind of look back in their life and they kind of will say things like, oh, I screwed it all up.

You know, if I hadn't done this, then everything would have been fine.

And they feel really hopeless now.

But the nature of their hopelessness was that something happened in the past.

And what happened in the past was so definitive, was so final, that they're kind of screwed for the rest of their life.

And so what their mind does is really focuses on that regret, focuses on that mistake in the past.

And they have this case of what I call the shoulda, woulda, couldas.

And so their mind, if you talk to them, they'll say things like, oh, if I had done this, if I could have done this, if I would have done that, then everything would be different today.

And oftentimes, these people also live in kind of like a world of fantasy.

So in their mind, they kind of are constantly thinking about how things would be different today.

And they kind of imagine like, oh, if I hadn't made those mistakes, imagine how awesome my life would be now.

It's their mind kind of lives in this fantasy.

And instead of sort of doing anything about it, they kind of are stuck in this, what I call a fantasy trap.

So the first thing that we have to do is understand, okay, like what is the nature of fantasy?

How does fantasy work in our mind?

And this is where I'm going to share a little bit about my own experience.

So I remember, you know, when I used to fantasize a lot as a kid.

So I was young and generally speaking scrawny.

So I would get bullied a lot in school.

And so I remember like it's, I kind of remember it like it was yesterday.

You know, when I get bullied, like these kids would be bigger than me.

Sometimes they were like one or even two years older.

And so I'd get bullied by this big kid.

And I would feel like really, really sad and ashamed of myself, right?

Like you feel so bad when you get bullied.

Everyone's laughing at you.

And the bully and everyone else kind of gets bored of like beating up on you and they kind of walk away.

And I'd be sitting there like holding back my tears, feeling really bad about myself.

And then my mind would start to think.

It'd start to think about how I'm going to learn martial arts, right?

It's going to be like super karate kid up in here.

And I'm going to learn how to like defend myself.

And then one day the bully is going to show up and I'm going to teach him a lesson, right? that's what's going to happen and then i'm going to kick his ass

and then everyone's going to start cheering and then i'm

and then what it's kind of bizarre

but there there i am on the playing on the playground

and i feel the sense of triumph which is really bizarre

because i just got bullied but my mind now suddenly i feel

so good about myself i feel righteous and there's justice

and he's gonna get what he deserves and i'm gonna be the one

that to give it to him so i feel

so good about myself if you stop

and think about it like what the heck just happened there

and there i was feeling ashamed about myself there i was feeling

so negative about myself

and my mind played this little trick on me right my mind started to fantasize

and then what happened to the negative emotion it suddenly became a sense of triumph

so the first thing to understand is

that fantasy is our mind's way of taking a negative emotion and transforming it into something positive.

Taking that negative emotion, and then when we run through that little script in our mind, we kind of feel relieved in the present.

And why is that even a problem, right?

So if we really think about it, you know, fantasy is like pretty cool.

It's like a way of coping with negative emotions.

You can kind of imagine how things would have been different, and then you feel good about yourself.

And even those people who come into my office filled with regret

when they fantasize they imagine right

so there they are thinking oh my god my life is terrible i screwed it all up tons

and tons of negative emotion and so

when they fantasize they think oh imagine how things could have

been i would have had tons of friends i would have

been super successful i would have been you know i would have found

that next tech company or I would have developed the first crypto coin if only, oh man, that would be so awesome.

and they feel good about themselves so then what's the problem with

that right why is that why is that a bad thing

because our mind clearly transforms negative emotion into positive emotion

when we fantasize the reason that's a problem is

because most of our energy most of our learning

and a lot of our motivation actually comes from negative emotion

if you look at what spurs human beings forward it's usually negative emotion

and even if we look at our brain what we find is the parts of our brain

that experience negative emotion are actually very very close to

and quite connected with our with the learning centers of the brain

and you'll understand this very easily

if you have like you know 10 good experiences at one restaurant

but then the 11th time you get sick

when you eat there you're not going to want to eat at

that restaurant again because our mind learns so much and

so much of our behavior is actually dictated by our negative emotion and And our amygdala, which experiences so much of our negative emotion,

is literally right up against our hippocampus in our brain.

So the connections are very, very strong between the negative emotional parts of our brain and the learning parts of our brain.

And so now we can see why people who are in the fantasy trap are kind of stuck, right?

Because instead of using that negativity to spur them forward, instead of using that negativity to actually change their behavior and make a change in their life,

when they engage in fantasy trap they sort of pull the plug on

that negative emotion it kind of drains away

and then they end up doing nothing to fix their life

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and this is also what we see in other kinds of distracting things

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so for example video games and substances when we feel bad about ourselves

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and we play these video games where we use substances it shuts down our emotional centers of the brain

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and then we actually don't make any changes in our life

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so this is the first thing to understand about the fantasy trap, is that it replaces negative emotion with positive emotion.

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And when we replace that negative emotion with positive emotion, we actually deprive ourselves of a lot of fuel to actually make positive changes in our life.

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So let's just kind of take a quick look at this and kind of diagram it out, okay?

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So here I am feeling sad about myself in the present.

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Oh no, look at how much I screwed up in life.

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I made so many mistakes and I am destined to be a loser.

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So then what happens is we're thinking about all of this regret.

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Okay?

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And so then what does the fantasy trap do?

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There we are feeling bad about ourselves and it rewrites history, right?

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So then we come up with this other history in our mind where if I had done this differently, if I had done that differently,

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then life would be different and I wouldn't be the person

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that i am today and so the first thing that

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that does is we notice the emotional change right here's the negative emotion

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and here's the positive emotion

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so even by doing this what we've done is deprive ourselves of some of

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that motivation that comes from negative energy there's another energetic component to this as well

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which is that simply the mind can't do everything

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so our mind has a limited amount of energy

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and we can only fix or focus or expend our energy thinking about one thing at a time.

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So if we think about this scenario, what have we actually spent our mental energy doing?

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We've spent our mental energy to rewrite history.

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And this is a really, what I'm about to say next is really confusing because it's so damn simple, but rewriting history is never going to make your life better

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you literally cannot rewrite history the present is the present your life is your life

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so when you spend 10 or 15 minutes dumping the energy in your mind

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because think what you're doing here right you're doing

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so much problem solving you're thinking okay

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if i had done this then this would be different

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if i had done this then this would be different your

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mind is literally spending your problem solving energy to change the past into a hypothetical present.

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And then the question becomes, where do you go from here?

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You can't go anywhere from here because that's not real.

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It's a fantasy.

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When your mind rewrites history, it creates a false present and you spent all of your energy in doing this.

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And so this is the second reason that you stay stuck

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because you expend all of your energy to create a false present and you can't actually move anywhere from a false present.

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So now the question becomes, what do we do about the fantasy trap?

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How do we change things?

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The first thing to understand is that you have to tolerate negative emotion.

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So what I want y 'all to do is to notice that when you're feeling bad about yourself, watch your mind go back to the past and watch your mind rewrite history.

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And I want you to try to stop doing that and just sit with that negativity in the moment.

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It can be really overwhelming at first but just sit with those negative thoughts okay i made mistakes

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My life isn't very good right now.

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And then what we're gonna do is ask yourselves, what am I gonna do now?

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So instead of asking yourself, because this is where your mind goes, what should I have done differently?

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Because you can ask that question as many times as you want to.

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It's gonna feel really good.

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You can problem solve the past until the end of time, and it will never change today.

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So instead of asking yourself or focusing on what you should have done, ask yourself, what am I going to do now?

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So what we really want you to do is instead of looking to the past, because this is the problem in depression, remember, is that our mind is focused on the past

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when things were okay and then rewriting to the present and creating a false future,

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what we want to do is redirect that energy to looking forward, right?

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And asking yourself, what can I do now?

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because this is where your cognitive energy needs to go you need to be focused on the present

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and everyone says focus on the present man live in the present bro it's

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so awesome we're gonna be so mindful

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and we're like living in the present like I try to live life in the present

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which is why I don't pay my bills

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and I don't take out the trash

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because I'm living life in the present what people don't realize is

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that living in the in the present sucks it's brutal because when you live in the present,

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you have to sit there and acknowledge all the crap that you've done and where you are.

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And that moving forward from this point is not easy.

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The reason it's so damn hard to live in the present is because living in the present is terrible.

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But we've still got to do it.

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It's our only way forward.

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I know it sounds really bizarre.

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It's another one of those super profound statements that sounds so obvious.

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It's dumb.

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You can't live anywhere except for the present like literally the only thing

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that i can do is move my hand around now i can't move what i did a minute ago

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and i can't move what i'm going to do a minute

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from now the only time action can be taken is from the present

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and the problem with the fantasy trap is

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that it lets us get out of the present it absolves us of dealing with the present and

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if it absolves us of dealing with the present we can't

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actually move forward the you can also create fantasies in the future right you can say, oh, if I did this today, then imagine what the future would be like.

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But the problem is that any action has to be taken in the present.

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So if we want to overcome the fantasy trap, we don't want to switch from the past to the future.

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Remember, the question that we ask ourselves is, what do I do today?

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Okay, fine.

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I'm in this place and this place sucks.

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What am I going to do about it now?

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You don't ask yourself where you're going to wind up.

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Don't worry about the outcome.

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Ask yourself, what is the first step that I need to take?

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What is the next step that I need to take?

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What is the step that I need to take right now?

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Phương Pháp Shadowing Là Gì?

Shadowing là kỹ thuật học ngôn ngữ có cơ sở khoa học, ban đầu được phát triển cho chương trình đào tạo phiên dịch viên chuyên nghiệp và được phổ biến rộng rãi bởi nhà đa ngôn ngữ học Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Nguyên lý cốt lõi đơn giản nhưng cực kỳ hiệu quả: bạn nghe tiếng Anh của người bản xứ và lặp lại to ngay lập tức — như một "cái bóng" (shadow) đuổi theo người nói với độ trễ chỉ 1–2 giây. Khác với luyện ngữ pháp hay học từ vựng bị động, Shadowing buộc não bộ và cơ miệng phải đồng thời xử lý và tái tạo ngôn ngữ thực tế. Các nghiên cứu khoa học xác nhận phương pháp này cải thiện đáng kể phát âm, ngữ điệu, nhịp điệu, nối âm, kỹ năng nghe và độ lưu loát khi nói — đặc biệt hiệu quả cho người luyện IELTS Speaking và muốn giao tiếp tiếng Anh tự nhiên như người bản ngữ.

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Phương Pháp Shadowing Là Gì?