This is the Business English Podcast episode 273 when the going gets tough.
Welcome to the Business English Podcast from all ears English. Get the English skills you need
to achieve your dreams in global business. For a presentation, a meeting, or your office party,
this is real Business English with your favorite American hosts, Lindsay and Michelle coming to you
from New York City and Colorado, USA.
Hello, Michelle. How's it going? Good. How are you, Lindsay? Good question for you.
You're ready. All right. So would you say that you are a resilient person?
Yes, I do. I would say that I'm a resilient person, especially in the last few years. There's
been a lot that have happened. That's happened to be personally. Professionally, we all dealt with
COVID, right? We all had to be resilient. What about you? You are very resilient. I think you have
to be resilient as an entrepreneur. What do you think? You do. We've had a lot of business
challenges just this year, the last few years, mostly this year that have come up that unexpected
things. Challenges put in front of us, but we've come together as a team and we have found ways
to make it work. I think that when you imagine a challenge coming to you, it feels like you won't
be able to handle it. But when it actually comes to you, you really do have the resources,
the skills, the intelligence, and the community to help you deal with it.
I think that that does make sense. Sometimes it seems so overwhelming. It can sometimes just be
that way in your head and then you actually get to do something and you realize, wait, I can do this.
Yeah, you got it. What a great feeling of strength. Especially if you use your resources,
the people around you to support you. This all sounds really good. Today, we're talking about
resilience, right? Michelle? Resilience. Yes. Exactly. Guys, also, we have another episode for you
to listen to. Recently, we did episode 267 was catch this episode just in time to use English
at work. One of those. Listen to this. Okay. So another way to ask this, if you say,
are you resilient? The other idea is tough. That word tough, right? Are you a tough person?
But it's interesting because tough can mean a couple different ways. It can either mean
resilient, you're strong or it could be negative. You're a tough person to deal with.
Oh, right. Or like a tough teacher in a position or something. That teacher is really tough.
Don't choose that teacher for Bio 101, for example, in college. Yeah.
Exactly. So actually, we're going to answer a listener question today about a phrase in English
that's useful for work, which deals with the word tough. Yeah. By the way, guys, we love your
questions, right? Send us your questions. You know, you could send them into support at
allersenglish.com and we'll make sure that we route that question in the right direction.
So that Michelle and Aubrey get the questions, right? Michelle? And yeah, we'll get them. And if
there are great specific questions, we would love to answer them for you. Okay. Yes. Yes.
What's the question, Michelle? Do you want to read it? Okay. So the question is by Edna Amaru
Guzman. And the question is, what is the meaning of tough going?
Interesting. This one is tough going. Okay. So let's talk about it, Michelle. I mean,
this one I don't hear is much tough going. Yeah. But I think it ties into something else. I'm
more used to hearing. Right. So I did look up tough going. And I also want to, if our listeners
aren't sure how to spell this, Lindsay, how do we spell it? That's a great question. Right. So
tough is tough to spell. So T-O-U-G-H. And maybe it's time for another episode, maybe over on
all earsenglish podcast about words that aren't spoken the way they're spelled.
Well, which is almost all of them because English is so strange with the spelling. But yeah,
that would be a good one. We could do a whole boatload of episodes. Yeah. Yeah. Guys, make sure
that you are over on all earsenglish as well as businessenglish and hit the follow button over
there too, because we do five days a week, including Saturdays now. All right. Yes. Let's do that.
That's right. Okay. So we're going to talk about tough going. So I did look this up. And yeah,
this one is not as common for me, but it basically means difficult work a hard time.
So you could say it was tough going for her during tax season, but now she can actually have some
free time. Yes, it was tough going for her during the banashikan actually have some free time. Love
that. Yeah. I mean, everyone knows accountants have a crazy season. I guess it's between January and
April, right, tax day, April 15th. Things are crazy. And then they're able to relax a little bit more.
There are a lot of, I guess there are probably a fair number of careers that are seasonal, right?
Where things are very busy at a certain time. Yeah. And here's another example. The second half
was tough going for all the players, but they won in the end. Okay. Thank you. About my basketball here.
Yeah. All right, Michelle. So let's teach the other expression that is actually kind of, I don't know,
more cultural, I would say, and kind of more fun. Yeah. I know. I'm excited about this one. So
the expression is when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Okay. So I actually even just heard
this expression when I was planning the episode. So that's crazy. Yeah. I know. I love, I love when
that happens. That happens to me all the time. It's the weirdest thing. So sometimes you might just
hear the first half when the going gets tough, right? And everybody knows the second half. Lindsay,
what do you think? Yeah. When the going gets tough, what are you asking me if I hear the first half
sometime? Oh, yeah. For sure. And we've talked about this on this show in all our English.
Many times we definitely, we know the phrase is just it's cultural. And so we only say the beginning
because we don't need to say the whole thing. It kind of takes too much work, too much breath. Yeah.
It's true. It's true. So what does this mean? What does one this? So just to say it one more time
for our listeners, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. So it's interesting because I think
a lot of people say the tough gets going. Really? I don't know. I've heard, I've heard people say when
that's going, it's tough, the tough gets going. I don't know. But well, that okay. So it's that
would mean. So there's two, it would be saying the tough, the as and kind of a noun, the tough in
you gets going. But I usually think of it, the tough people get going. The tough people get going.
Right. So there are two ways to actually say this, to make it grammatically correct and be saying
two slightly different things. Right. Right. But if you look it up online, I see, I don't really see,
okay, there's one. No, no, no, no, I mostly see the tough get going. Yeah, that actually don't,
I don't see it the other way. Yeah. So it means, so it means when things get hard, tough people,
they get activated. Like they take action. They say, okay, what do we have to do? They don't curl
up and hide under the bed. Right. Right. Right. Exactly. They become stronger to deal with it. So
the going in this context is basically whatever someone is experiencing in life, when that gets tough,
difficult, right. The tough, the resilient people or or I think, yeah, the, yeah, the resilient
people get going. So they work harder. They get stronger. I like what you said. They become
activated. They become activated. Yeah. Ooh, interesting. Yeah. Michelle, what about you? Have
you had an experience, you know, where you've identified, I suppose we all have. Yeah. Right.
I think we all have there are some that are personal and some that are, I mean, I,
it's pretty easy to think of COVID, right? The global pandemic for this. Right. I think for
everybody, it was when the going gets tough, the tough get going, right. You, you just had to do
it. There was no choice. You had to figure it out. Parents had to stay home with their kids. Kids
couldn't go to school. Just emotionally dealing with not people, seeing people, people who
unfortunately got very sick or passed away. Right. There was so much toughness that we needed to
have as a society. And yeah, we had to get the tough going. Yeah. That's interesting. Right.
Yeah. I think sometimes, sometimes more gets done when our backs are up against a wall, you know,
in a way. But I also think it's pretty cultural. This expression. I think there's something in the
fabric of American culture, our cultural narrative. I mean, the idea of, you know, moving west in the
1800s, the gold rush, the whole idea of like finding something better is how American culture was
born, how the United States was born. And so there's a very rugged individualism that still ran,
still rampant, still present in our culture for better or for worse, pull yourself up by your
bootstraps, be a rugged individual, get it done yourself, do it all by yourself. Even say to our
kids, right? Yeah. For sure. It's everywhere. And I think this, this follows that way of thinking.
I feel like it probably goes back to the Wild West this phrase. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I think, yeah. You brought, you brought about some really good points. I like what you said about
the one about the bootstraps that I was thinking of that expression as well. It's a similar idea.
I've just played yourself up by your bootstraps. You got this. And it is definitely
baked into our culture, this feeling of, okay, we can do it, we can do it. But lately, I do feel
sometimes there's a little bit of a backfire about it. People do talk now about, oh, maybe we
need to lay off. We need to change them things. Yeah. So it's interesting to see that evolve.
Oh, for sure. I mean, the Reagan era, I think, you know, brought that about this sort of
no safety net concept, right? In our politics and our society. And now we're seeing
the culmination, the negative effects of that. We don't have, compared to other cultures,
politically, I don't think we have that much of a safety net, you know, for society, right?
Yeah. And so Reaganism was all about that. Like, tax cuts, cutting programs. And now,
like, it's been going on for 30, 40 years. And it's like, well, things are happening that are
not good. Like we're seeing bad effects of that. So anyways, we won't get into politics, but
it's tied into our narrative or culture. Politics are history. It's everywhere. So super interesting.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I do think that this is just when we think about the workplace,
this is a good expression or a good thing to think about for work. Because people go through hard
times in the business world and they have to be resilient. And it can even be a good way to
encourage people at work. So, let's see, what are some times when you might use this?
Well, so during the meeting, when you're presenting your team with some important news, which,
you know, we had something like this, you know, just a few weeks ago, we talked about the challenges
that we have faced as a team, as a company this year, we weren't hiding from them, we weren't,
we weren't like, you know, brushing them under the rug and how are we doing against these
challenges? We're measuring our result. Like how's it going? Yeah. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Or just giving
a different, a difficult assignment, right? Maybe somebody's a little intimidated about a
assignment, an assignment they receive and you're using it to either reassure them or maybe it's
teammate that's nervous and you can't, come on, we can do this. Any other times, Lindsay, you can
think of? You could have what comes to mind is let's say you have a friend who's having like,
let's say you have a friend who has a company, they're having some kind of a business dispute
with a, with like a business partner or something and that could be very existential and very,
very stressful. That might be something, right? Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of contacts in which
this car is sure. So would you use this expression? Do you use it personally? Yeah. I mean, sure. You
know, it's, it's common. I probably would shorten it. Again, I think there's something about not
saying the whole expression. It almost feels a little cheesy when I say the whole thing. But I do
think it's embedded in our, in our culture in a major way when they're going at stuff. And I think
we do have if, like if you listen, yeah, it's just I'm fascinated by culture about how we pass on
cultural cues and we don't even know it. What do we say to people when they're faced with a big
challenge? Yeah. That comes from culture comes with personality, but it also comes from cultural
cues. We've gotten our entire lives. Right. Right. It's fascinating. Yeah. That is a very,
very interesting point that we could really discuss a lot more and give examples that. So we'll dig
into this deeper more in the future. So definitely remember to hit follow guys. So all right,
let's do some examples of how you actually might hear this in conversation. How you might use it.
Lindsay, what's the first one? Okay. Here we go. We could say this. Okay, team. So we've had some
setbacks, but we have to remember when they're going gets tough, the tough get going. So we can do
this, right? Yes. All right. Good. Very encouraging. Or here's another one. He failed his first
CPA exam, but when the going gets tough, you better believe he passed the second time.
Yeah. I think sometimes in some scenarios, I personally need a little bit of an initial setback
or an initial failure to have the motivation. Like there needs to be some kind of challenge to
really search forward. Like in middle school, when I was learning French, I failed like the first
semester so badly. I got like a D and I was like, okay, I'm going to make this work. I'm going to
make this work. I'm going to study like crazy. I'm going to figure out French. And then by the
second semester, I was a top student because I was motivated by that failure. So that is this
concept, right? Yeah. That's a good way of thinking. Lindsay. I mean, yeah. So he failed his first
exam and you can see in that example, I just used the first part, but when the going gets tough,
and then I said, you better believe he passed the second time. So what am I am playing there?
You better believe that you know, we know that he was motivated by that by that failure initially.
He worked really hard. He studied harder. He worked. He worked his touch off. And he was like,
yeah, then he passed. Oh, yeah, he wasn't going to fail again.
It's also going to make you think of companies and you know, this is a bigger question about when
companies grow, when they have their most growth, probably as a startup or like an early to mid-stage
startup, rather than once they become a big company, they're kind of just often riding along.
It probably becomes harder to innovate because they have money. They have cultural presence.
It becomes harder to keep innovating, but those are the things companies need to,
they don't have that challenge. They won't innovate. They won't get better. So what's
to talk about here, Michelle? There is a lot to talk about. So all right, guys, when you're
dealing with something tough at work, maintain perspective, I think is a good thing to think about,
right? To try not to try to take a step back and realize what's important here. And sometimes,
yeah, it's very important work, but just also just take that step back and clear your head,
right? So thinking about the perspective, that actually might help you to feel more comfortable
to work harder, to get better with whatever it is in the tough time. Yeah, taking a step back.
It also will give you, like you said, that fresh perspective, if you don't let yourself be
fully consumed by it, take breaks, distract yourself on the weekends, go do something else,
don't be so curled up and paralyzed because then we won't get ideas to solve the problem.
We need that fresh air, in a sense. We do. We do. I don't know. You can talk to someone on the
outside about the situation. That's what our friends are for, partners, spouses, whoever it is,
right? You can always get help that way. So let's do a role play, Lindsay. Okay, here we go,
Michelle. So we are teammates on a project. Here we go. Oh, I can't believe we didn't get that
account, Michelle. Yeah, really tough going. Oh, I think, oh, my gosh, I messed it up.
What's that? Let's start again. Take a look at that connection. I skipped a line. Yeah, this takes
it's normal. Here we go. I can't believe we didn't get that account. I know. So disappointing.
Yeah, really tough going. Well, when the going gets tough, the tough gag going, we got this.
Okay, so here I completed the idiom, the expression for you. And I was like, I see you. I hear you.
Yeah, we're in the same way. Yeah, we might go a little high five. Give a little laugh.
Exactly. Exactly. So again, I'm expressing disappointment and you are too. And then I say, yeah,
really tough going. Meaning, hey, we had a tough scenario, tough results, difficult situation.
Okay. Yeah. And again, we don't think that one is used quite as frequently as this other one,
but it's good to take note of generally what it means. So and then I said, well, when the going
gets tough and you completed it with the tough gag going, we got this. So we had a little pep talk
session just between us, little peperally. Yes. Yes. Exactly. But yeah, this was, you know, pretty,
you didn't have to complete it. You could have just said, yeah, we got this. And that would have
been fine as well. Because again, people know this expression. They don't need the second half.
They don't need the second half. Yes. Absolutely. This is a connection episode. Michelle,
100% connection at work, inevitably, you know, if you work at a place long enough,
you're going to have some kind of challenge or in your personal life, inevitably, there's going to
be big challenges in life. So how do we handle it? You know, how do we talk about it? It doesn't
matter. Right? It definitely does matter. So, you know, try, you can use this to motivate others,
to motivate yourself or just as a mindset in general. So get, and you have this a try. I mean,
yeah, go ahead, Lindsay. I was just going to say, you can become a lot closer to your teammates
through challenge. Nothing brings people together more than outside and outside challenge. It's
like, yeah, it's in our brains, evolutionarily speaking, right? Right. I got a guard off the tiger,
the team, you know. And so, so that's a connection opportunity. That's what I wanted to say. Yeah.
That's right. That's great. I think we should leave it out that, guys. Thank you so much. And thank
you to our listener for that great question. And guys, whatever it is, that's difficult in your
life at work and your personal life. Remember when the going gets tough, that tough get going.
Go away. I'm sorry. I got excited. All right. All right. We're off the mic for today, Michelle.
I'll talk to you very soon. Have a good one. You too. Bye, Lindsay. Bye.
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