How much REAL English can you understand? (native speed)

If you can understand everything I'm going to tell you in this video, then you are ready to come to the UK. And that's because I'm going to be speaking at a very natural pace, which in the UK does tend to be quite fast. So this is going to be a very realistic test of your English listening abilities. I'm also going to be rambling a bit, I haven't really scripted this, and I'm going to be speaking about some rather abstract topics. So this is going to be a very good test, as I say. So basically, I have prepared some quotes that I want to speak to you about. So not only will you be training your English listening skills, but you'll also be training your wisdom. Yeah. So the first quote is this, it's an absolute classic. The mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. And this basically means that your mindset is everything. So no matter what you look for in a situation, you're likely to find. So if you look for the good in something, you'll find it. And if you look for the bad in something, you'll find it. This is kind of something that we need reminding of, because as humans, we are kind of trained, we are almost brought up to be pessimistic. From an evolutionary standpoint, that is how we survive. So if we were just chilling on a rock hundreds of years ago, in the caveman days, and we hear a rustle in the bushes, we have to be pessimistic and assume that is a tiger instead of a friendly cat. Because if we weren't pessimistic, then we would go and check it out and try and look for this cat, and we'd get eaten by the tiger. So we were trained to be pessimistic in order to survive, and we wouldn't be here. Otherwise, the optimists, they all left, you know, they're gone now, sadly. But you know, times have changed. So we don't need to have this same pessimistic mindset. This is something, as I say, that we all need reminding of constantly. But it's just, I think it's a nice quote to remember. Right, the next one, we have two lives and the second begins when we realize we only have one. So obviously, this sounds really nice. But what does it actually mean? Well, it refers to the brevity of life. So how brief or short it is, right? So for me, I don't know about you, but certainly for me, I have lived a large portion of my life on autopilot, just kind of going day to day without really being that present. And I remember I was in a sauna a few years ago. And you know, in the sauna, they have those timer things, where it's the sand falls down from the hourglass. And there's no way of getting the bottom sand to go back up unless you turn it around again. Well, I was looking at that, I was just in there turning it over. And I remember I saw this meme or this post on Instagram, like five years ago saying, this is your life. Okay, once the time is gone, you will never get it back. Now at the time, I thought, Oh, yeah, that's cool. It doesn't. Okay, I have something to bear in mind. Okay, then I just forgot about it. And it was only in that moment in the sauna, fairly recently, that was like, Oh, my goodness, when you see like the visual example, that really puts it into perspective. Yeah. So basically, the idea is that once you realize how short your life actually is, that's when your second life begins. That's when you start living it properly. Okay. And yeah, if you're wondering why my hands are so dirty, I've been in the nature today, I'll show you in a minute. But the nature here is incredible. I'm in Kyrgyzstan at the moment. Anyway, quotes number three, unspoken expectations are premeditated resentment. And this is so good. And this is all about relationships. So it could be any form of relationship, it could be a friendship, it could be a business partnership, it could be a romantic relationship. And it basically means that if you have something that you expect the other person to do, then you need to tell them because if you don't, if you have unspoken expectations, if you don't tell the other person you are expecting these things, then they're not going to do these things, right? So therefore, when they don't do them, you're going to be annoyed and therefore you're going to resent this other person. However, it's kind of your fault as well for not telling the other person that you expected them to do these things. So these resentments are premeditated, you kind of brought them into existence, the moment you decided you had these expectations for the other person, but you weren't going to tell them what you expected. You're setting the other person up to disappoint you. That's a good one, right? Okay, two more quotes to go. We'll go for a quick nature break. Enjoy. So obviously, the camera never really does justice. But look at this, we are truly in the middle of nowhere. So this is Karakol in Kyrgyzstan. We have the cows there, we have the hills, the mountains there, a proper mountain up there with all the trees and stuff like that. I think these are pine trees. Another mountain up there, I was doing some walking earlier with some more woods. It's just remarkable. Quote number four, we suffer more in imagination than we do in reality. And this is Seneca with a classic Stoic banger. And I'm sure we can all relate to this. So how many times have you been in a situation where you are sure you were sure that this bad thing was going to happen and you played it out in your head, this imaginary scenario where this bad thing did happen. And you felt all of these negative repercussions and all of these negative emotions that came with this bad thing, as if it did actually happen, just for it to never actually happen. So it may as well have happened with the amount of negative feelings that you felt from it, just from this scenario that you made up in your head. Okay, there's another quote related to this. It's like, I've had many problems in my life, most of which didn't actually happen. I think it was Oscar Wilde. I don't know. I'll put the real one on the screen now. But this probably has another thing to do with our evolutionary journey, right? We are trained to worry about things that may or may not happen, like threats, but we don't have these same threats anymore in the modern world. It's so easy to get carried away when something bad happens and just assume that all of these negative things are going to come from it. But realistically, most of the time, like 99% of the time, these things never actually happen. And the most annoying thing is, when you play these situations out in your head, in that very moment, you're like, I'd give anything for this thing not to happen. I'd be so grateful and so happy for this thing not to happen. And when this thing doesn't happen, you don't really take the time to think, oh my goodness, I'm so glad and I appreciate it so much. I'm so grateful that it didn't happen. No, you just kind of go back to normal life. Maybe you appreciate it for one second, then you just move on. That's another thing. We take things for granted. I was thinking this the other day, and this isn't me like preaching. I do this so much as well. We all do. It's just a human thing, isn't it? Where I had the most unbearable tooth pain a few months ago. And I remember thinking in that moment, oh, this is horrible. I cannot wait. I'm going to be so happy and so grateful once I just return back to normal and this tooth pain isn't here. Then I had the surgery, and after a couple of days, it was back to normal. And I was probably grateful for about two minutes, and then I just went back to my normal life. So it's just insane how quickly we forget. Anyway, that was quote number four. Quote number five. This is a good one. This is what hard feels like. So this sounds very pithy, but what does it actually mean? I love this one because it's so actionable. Basically, it's talking about how when you want to achieve something hard, you need to just have this mindset. So let's say you want to do something hard, like learn English, for example. Before you start learning English, you're going to say to yourself, is this going to be easy? No, I know this is going to be hard. It's a hard language to learn. There are all of these grammar rules, all these things I need to know. I'm going to have to put in hours of sacrifice and work and all these things. It's going to be hard, I know that. Then you go about your journey. And then fast forward a few months, and you're kind of on the way to learning English. So it's nine o'clock, you're sitting at your desk, you've just had a hard day at work, and you know you need to spend an hour looking at the past participles, the different forms of all of these verbs and stuff like that. And you're bored, and you're tired, and you're hungry, and you want to quit. You're thinking, why is this so awkward? Maybe I shouldn't do this. Maybe this isn't for me. In that very moment, you need to remind yourself of the original quote, this is what hard feels like. At the start of the journey, you knew it was going to be hard, you accepted that this thing was going to be hard. And now you're in the midst of the journey, you need to remind yourself this very moment where everything feels awkward, and weird, and difficult, and hard. This is what hard feels like. I knew this was going to be hard, I signed up for this. Just keep going. And it's that simple. Yeah, and this can apply to any hard thing at all. Learning a language, starting a business, getting a promotion, anything that is challenging and therefore probably worth doing. This is what hard feels like. You're going to have these moments. And I like this one a lot because it just instantly like that can reframe your whole mindset. And I'm a big fan of that. So that's it guys. If you were able to understand that, congratulations, because I was speaking very fast. I was rambling a lot as well. And yeah, that's a very good test of your listening abilities. Now, of course, that is going to help with your listening skills. But there are going to be some other problems when it comes to learning English, in particular with speaking. So if you are one of the people who are able to understand that, but don't feel that confident when it comes to real life conversations, I'd recommend joining my private community. There's a seven day free trial. So you can try it for free, you get eight live calls a week, accent calls, pronunciation calls, speaking calls, vocabulary calls, all these things mainly with me. But we do also have an incredible modern RP British accent specialist. You get daily posts, messages and tips. It's basically the only place you need to be in order to actually improve your English with real people, with real learners, no AI stuff. And it's enjoyable. So actually, it keeps you motivated, even when things get hard, as we know from the last quote, they will. So yeah, the link to that is in the top comment. It really is the best English learning community there is. Right. Thank you so much for watching. If you did enjoy this one, I'd recommend checking out this video here. It's in a similar style. And I'll see you again very soon for another video. But quickly, let's do one more nature check. Look at this. Absolutely beautiful. Thank you for watching guys.