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How to Find Your Purpose (W/ Yara Shahidi) | How to Be a Better Human | TED

English shadowing practice · 1126 sentences · 38:53 long · 7738 words

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This page turns the YouTube video “How to Find Your Purpose (W/ Yara Shahidi) | How to Be a Better Human | TED” into an English shadowing exercise. The recording is split into 1126 short sentences that you can play one at a time, repeat after the speaker and record your own version for automatic pronunciation scoring.

The speaker talks at about 210 words per minute, a fast pace, with an average of 6.9 words per sentence. That makes it best for advanced learners; slow the playback down or loop each sentence at first.

How to practise with this video

Play the first sentence and listen while reading the transcript. Notice the stress, the pauses and where the intonation rises or falls.
Replay it and speak along with the speaker, copying the rhythm rather than reading word by word.
Record yourself straight after the original. ShadowEcho scores each word for accuracy, fluency and completeness.
Compare your recording with the original, retry the words marked in red, then move on to the next sentence.
Practise 10–15 minutes a day. Coming back to the same video after a few days is an easy way to measure progress.

Transcript (English)

0:00 My Grampy and I would reimagine and act
0:02 out the entire saga of the Odyssey with
0:04 my Polly Pocket dolls, as one does at
0:07 the age of four.
0:08 And around the age of five, I asked for
0:10 every religious book, I mean every
0:12 religious book. Fast forwarding to 13, I
0:15 read my first short story from the
0:17 formidable James Baldwin, and my life
0:19 was forever changed. Needless to say, I
0:22 was grateful to be surrounded by a
0:24 community of people that honored my
0:25 interests. But as I got older, I began
0:28 to get confronted by a big question.
0:31 Are you sure about that? Now, this was a
0:33 question I really could not escape in
0:35 August of 2018, right as I was embarking
0:38 on my next adventure. I was beginning my
0:40 freshman year at Harvard right as my
0:42 television show Grown-ish began filming
0:44 season 2. And I was at a crossroads,
0:47 because acting for me has been more than
0:49 a career. It's given me permission to
0:51 explore my fantasies. I feel like I gain
0:54 another level of empathy every time I
0:56 step into a different character's shoes.
0:58 But my education has been equally as
1:00 pivotal. Because my education has
1:02 fulfilled my endless desire to know. To
1:05 know places, to know the events that
1:07 have shaped us, the communities that
1:09 have built us, the obstacles that have
1:11 tried to stop us, the mistakes that
1:13 haunt us, but selfishly, to know about
1:16 myself and my place in the world. So, my
1:19 two lifelong passions were colliding and
1:22 I was being told by academic advisers
1:25 and entertainment folk alike, although
1:27 no one on my team, that there was no
1:30 symbiotic relationship between the two
1:31 worlds. I was searching for an and, but
1:34 I kept getting presented an either/or.
1:36 And I almost let those five words, are
1:38 you sure about that, stop me.
1:41 Now, I've graduated from Harvard and my
1:44 television show is ending. And a couple
1:46 years ago, this really would have
1:47 terrified me to leave two spaces that I
1:50 know so well. But because I've built a
1:52 life centered on honoring my interests,
1:55 everything from the glockenspiel to
1:57 Octavia Butler. I walk excitedly towards
2:00 what's next because I know somewhere
2:02 between the two lies my next adventure.
2:08 Hey, I'm Yara Shahidi. I'm an actor,
2:10 producer, and co-creator of the Optimist
2:13 Project. My first question for you is
2:16 obviously you identify as an optimist.
2:18 Um, I also identify as an optimist. Um,
2:21 you said something in your TED Talk that
2:22 I think is really interesting, which is
2:24 that being a pessimist is easy. That for
2:27 me came from just lived experience of
2:32 being a teenager and being a young
2:33 adult. And I think there was a moment at
2:36 18 where I felt extremely hopeful. I
2:39 felt like I had just been given this new
2:43 civic duty. I could vote. I had a voting
2:46 initiative and I felt
2:49 so hopeful because of the energy and
2:52 synergy of my generation. And I think
2:54 realizing that the civic process and
2:56 what happens in the world is so
2:58 complicated, that was immediately
3:00 followed by an era of being like, "What
3:02 am I doing? And can you change anything?
3:04 And what really has impact?" And I'd
3:07 have to say even going to college
3:09 exacerbated that feeling because you sit
3:11 so long or speaking for myself,
3:13 I sat so long in a place of critique.
3:15 I'm in a social science. All you do all
3:17 day is read and critique and say, "Oh, I
3:19 would have done this better or I wonder
3:20 why they didn't consider X, Y, Z in this
3:23 conceit." And so, my era of pessimism
3:26 luckily was short-lived, but I learned
3:28 so much because what I realized outside
3:31 looking in is that I got nothing done.
3:33 Was that even being hopeful and even
3:35 slightly naive at times, I accomplished
3:37 more than sitting in my pessimism and
3:40 trying to account for all that could go
3:42 wrong or why something would not work.
3:44 And
3:46 I think that's what got me to even this
3:48 pursuit of optimism, not as going back
3:50 to being naive per se, but is saying,
3:53 "Well, I did the other thing and sat
3:56 there and did nothing." And so, optimism
3:57 is the consideration that you may not
3:59 get much done, but at least you're doing
4:01 more than nothing. And I think it's
4:03 especially clear when you're younger
4:05 that like, "Well, I'm not just going to
4:06 do nothing. There's too much time to do
4:08 nothing, so I have to do something."
4:11 Um and it's easy later on to get stuck
4:13 in the what is realistic or what's
4:15 possible. Um how do you battle that like
4:18 in yourself?
4:20 Some of it is
4:22 really being in conversation with
4:24 people. I think why The Optimist Project
4:26 came about was because of rooms like TED
4:30 and because of how rejuvenating it was
4:33 to be in conversation with people that
4:36 have introduced me to a field I knew
4:37 nothing about, introduced me to a topic
4:39 I knew nothing about. And
4:42 reason why I even loved school as much
4:43 as I did was because there's nothing as
4:46 exciting as realizing how little I know.
4:48 It means that the door of possibility is
4:51 just only slightly cracked open. Mhm.
4:53 And something that allows me personally
4:57 to battle those feelings of what's
5:00 realistic, those feelings of pessimism
5:02 is realizing I'm working with 0.00098.
5:06 That's even an a complete overestimation
5:08 of the world's knowledge. And maybe that
5:10 there's something inspiring and
5:11 impactful on the other side of
5:13 continuing to learn. Yeah, I love that.
5:15 I also love how precise you were that it
5:16 was 0.00098. I like I like the 8 part.
5:19 >> thinking I've done that calculation
5:20 before. I'm working in my general GPA
5:24 with
5:25 >> street smarts or lack thereof trying to
5:27 come to a I love that. GPA plus street
5:29 smarts divided by all of the world's
5:31 knowledge. That's how you got there. Um
5:33 I imagine that there's a lot of people
5:35 who are watching or listening who feel
5:37 like that door of possibility is
5:41 it's hard to crack open. Since you've
5:42 done a lot of thinking about this, what
5:44 are some of the practical tips you would
5:45 offer for people who feel like
5:48 especially right now Yeah. like there's
5:50 a lot of weight and that door of
5:51 possibility feels pretty shut. The door
5:53 of possibility feels pretty shut. I
5:54 think
5:56 I even said this in my talk, but it's
5:57 where I turn to history as well and I
6:00 really do find hope in how many moments
6:04 we've gone through just as a society
6:07 that have felt extremely difficult, that
6:09 have taken
6:11 lots of effort to push through. So, one
6:13 of my first tattoos, which you can't
6:14 really see is uh
6:17 1963, just a 63 for the year 1963.
6:21 And for me, it's a reminder that there's
6:24 so many people that work towards a
6:25 future they weren't guaranteed, but knew
6:29 was necessary to fight for.
6:31 I think of it as a world that I was able
6:33 to inherit because of that work. And so
6:37 I say that to really frame sometimes I
6:40 have to have conversations about who is
6:41 this work for. This work self-servingly
6:43 is for us and for right now and is
6:46 necessary for right now. And
6:49 at its most
6:51 you know, kind of
6:55 egalitarian,
6:57 it's for the future and it's working
6:59 towards something that we may not be
7:01 able to see, but know is necessary.
7:04 And then on a less esoteric level,
7:06 there's certain just practical things of
7:08 being like the last couple years
7:11 I've been tracking what we call the hard
7:13 yes list and this came from such a great
7:15 thing. Being able to work alongside your
7:18 business partner who also happens to be
7:19 your friend, who you also happen to be
7:21 related to. We have a lot of great life
7:22 talks and one thing that we were
7:23 figuring out as we talk quality of life,
7:26 I realized for for people that may not
7:28 know, I'm talking about Kerri Sheedy,
7:29 aka my mother, aka my my uh
7:32 partner in all things wonderful. Uh and
7:35 so we started developing what we just
7:37 call the hard yes list of things that
7:38 bring you joy and it can really range.

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How to Find Your Purpose (W/ Yara Shahidi) | How to Be a Better Human | TED

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Transcript (English)

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