This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2298.
I'm no expert. How to lower expectations in English.
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The IELTS Wiz and Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA.
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When someone asks for your help on something, what can you say to be humble, but still try to help?
Today, get three simple ways to do it in English to maintain the connection.
Hey Aubrey, how's everything going today?
I'm great, how are you, Lindsay?
Good, how are you feeling?
I mean, are you feeling well rested or what's going on?
Well, I have some serious insomnia actually.
Have you found anything that works to help you sleep through the night?
Well, I'm no expert but sometimes making sure your phone is not in your room is helpful for me.
Yes, you've mentioned that before.
I need to do better about that because it's true.
I'll like lie there and try to sleep and then eventually just grab the phone and then I'm up for hours.
Yeah, it's not as hard as I thought it would be.
If you just kind of, before going into your bedroom, you just put it somewhere else, put it on the charger downstairs or in an office.
And then it's like you now have to get up out of bed to get the phone and that's another level of addiction, right?
So then you're like, no, I'm not getting my phone.
I am committing right here to follow through with doing that.
Cause that might make a difference.
I need to do it. Okay, well, our listeners might hold you accountable for that then Aubrey.
If you want to say that publicly, we'll check in.
Yes, I need to be held accountable here.
So I'm excited to get into this.
What did I say in our opening roleplay today?
Aubrey. Yeah, you used this great phrase to say I'm no expert but, and then to share some advice.
And this was inspired by a recent episode when we talked about this.
Like, Oh, there are interesting phrases we use to sort of be a little more humble about the advice we're going to give or lower expectations.
So today we're going to teach you some of those ways that we do this.
Yes. And I think this is going to be a fascinating episode because a lot of cultural nuances are going to come across a lot of vocabulary and just very, very high level connection skills today.
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Aubrey with that in mind, should we go into a little mini roleplay for our listeners?
Well, we're first going to teach this.
Well, we've kind of shared it already, but this first one is just to say, I'm no expert, but, so this word expert means like, you know everything about a topic.
So if someone asks for your advice or asks you something, this is a good way to say, you know, I certainly don't know everything.
I'm no expert, but yeah.
What do you say when you actually are an expert in that topic?
That's another episode, right?
Yeah. That you just don't say anything.
You just launch right into the advice, right?
But I would probably say, well, I'm no expert, but I'd get this replaced if I were you.
Maybe if it's something that has anything to do with electronics, electronics or technology.
Yeah. I would say, well, I'm no expert, but yeah.
I love that. That's a different topic that I mentioned, but we did do an episode.
I think Michelle and I did an episode about how to ask experts about their field of study or field of profession at a party.
And it is a very nuanced topic because you need to show curiosity, openness.
So anyways, go into our back catalogs to find that one.
But today it's about bringing yourself down a bit, lowering expectations, but in a way that's socially acceptable, right?
And like you said, this is pretty cultural, right?
Depending on the culture, you might do this more to try to show humility or to lower expectations.
And it also depends on a person's personality.
I have noticed certain, I definitely am the type of personality that would do this.
Others aren't. And there's not really a right or a wrong way.
It's just sort of your own quirks.
Okay. I love that. Super interesting here.
So, all right, let's go into it.
Yeah, let's do a mini role play.
I'll start us out. I'm so impressed by how well your kids are behaved.
Tell me all your secrets.
I'm not exactly a pro, but I do try to give them a lot of opportunities to make their own decisions.
And I think that's built self -reliance and social skills.
Hmm. Yes. Nice. And we snuck another one in here.
This is actually highlighting our next.
What we're going to recommend here is to say, I'm not exactly a pro, but she means the same as I'm no expert.
Pro is short for professional.
This is another way we'll do it, right?
You're just sharing like, I'm not a perfect parent.
I'm not a pro, but, and then you can give some advice.
Yeah. If you're going to say this, you have to switch it up, right?
And just about the topic there, today's episode of the daily, if you listen to the New York times podcast, they go into the recent surgeon general's warning about parenting.
Have you heard about that Aubrey?
The surgeon general stuff.
Yeah. The surgeon general just released a warning, you know, like the smoking warnings, the alcohol warnings, they released a warning about parenting, saying that it's, if it's done in a super intensive way, there's a special term for it.
It can be harmful to the parents, not even talking about the kids.
And so the daily broke this down, brought an expert on the show.
It is really, really interesting.
It talks about the whole movement in the eighties where people became more aware of children's brains changing and interactions between parents.
Oh my gosh. A hundred percent.
I recommend our listeners to go over and check out that episode.
It's really good and me, I'm very interested.
It might be good news for me.
Cause I'm a pretty laid back parent.
So maybe this is that maybe.
So you might be doing it the right way that game.
All right. So that's a good little content recommendation for our listeners.
Let's go into another thing we can say then.
I guess we did say this, right?
We sort of highlighted, we sort of gave a little spoiler here.
This one is I'm not exactly a pro, but, and this is especially like for parenting.
I mean, you can say it for anything, but you can also share when you're not a professional, like if someone asks you to fix something and you'll give it a shot, but you're not a professional, you might say, not exactly a pro, but I could try to fix that if you'd like.
This has happened to me before where someone will ask about like something that has shorted out.
I'm like, I'll give it a shot, but I need to warn you that I'm no professional.
Yeah. And I think there's something on the human evolutionary level that feels good when we bring ourselves down to the level of someone else.
I think it's evolutionary layer, evolutionarily learned, right?
So that we can connect, you know?
Yes, that makes sense.
Yeah, for sure. I'll do another role play with this one cause I definitely want you guys to be able to use this one.
You want to start us out, Lindsay?
Yes, here we go. We're having some issues with our fridge shorting out.
And I heard you had a similar problem and we're able to fix it.
What'd you do? I checked the fuse and it needed to be replaced.
So it was an easy fix.
I'm not exactly a pro, but I'd definitely recommend you try that.
Ooh, very high level.
Love it. Getting in there, Aubrey, fixing things.
Yes, I had this exact situation where I had let a friend know, like our fridge kept shorting out and this was the fix.
And they were like, this happened to me now.
What did you do? And I'm sure I used one of today's phrases, right?
I'm no expert, but I'm not a pro, but this is what I did, so try it out.
I love it, so good.
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Okay, Aubrey, we are back to our number three.
The third thing we could say to bring ourselves down and lower expectations, and then we can feel free to give advice from our own perspective, our experience.
What do we say? Exactly, this one is, I certainly don't have all the answers, but I use this one as well.
They all mean the same thing, right?
I'm not an expert, I don't have all the answers.
And then after that, you can share your, you know, a little bit of advice, what you have found works.
Yeah, so for example, I certainly don't have all the answers but making lists has helped me stay organized.
And in that case, we can emphasize me, right?
Because then you're clearly speaking from your own experience, right?
Yeah, right, love that intonation.
This is something Jessica has told me and she probably started it with something like this.
I'm no expert, I certainly don't have all the answers but I was asking for her tips on staying organized and she is a list maker.
Which I've picked up and it does help.
Really, good, glad to hear it, glad to hear it.
Lists are always good and some of that comes back to our American cultural values of how satisfying is to get things done, right?
Yes, something off that list, absolutely.
Yes, we are a very task based society.
So there's so much culture in here, it's just awesome.
All right, so another role play, Aubrey?
Yeah, I'll start us out here to use this one.
I've been feeling a lot of anxiety lately and you just seem so grounded and calm.
What do you do to maintain that outlook?
I'm glad to hear that I seem calm, I certainly don't have all the answers but I found meditation really helps me stay focused on what matters.
Yeah, I love this and it's also a great way if someone compliments you like this and if you are the type of person that has a hard time just saying thank you, right?
If you're a little more uncomfortable with compliments, something like this is perfect especially if they're sharing your advice, you're showing humility, showing you don't know everything but also accepting the compliment.
Yeah, it makes you free to give an answer that's practical and sometimes we don't see certain things in ourselves that others see.
So this is when someone catches you off guard, I seem calm, wow, right?
And maybe I am calm, who knows?
Thank you, I'm glad to see that I appear calm.
And then you're able to transition into, okay, how can I help this person?
Because that's really what we're focusing on here, we just received this compliment, what does it mean?
No, no, it's not about that, it's about how can I help this person now, right?
The connection moment.
Yeah, exactly and we also want to share, there are so many ways to do this.
We have a lot of phrases in English that we use to lower expectations, to accept a compliment humbly, right, with humility and in our archives, there's a great episode that you and Michelle did, Lindsey, 649, it's a little while ago but it was how to give advice in a humble way with five English phrases.
So on our blog, if you search advice or humble, these come up and I wanted to just briefly share some of the phrases we covered there that you can also use.
Take this with a grain of salt, take this for what it's worth but take this for leave it.
And then another one, not sure if this is what you're looking for but, so these are all totally different ones but we're in the same vein, we're talking about the same basic idea.
Exactly, that way that we give advice but first try to show humility.
Yeah, and I think the best way to access our really older episodes like 600 is definitely the blog, Aubrey, because there's a lot of episodes in our queue inside the podcast.
So come back to the website.
Yeah, you might be scrolling for a while.
I've done that, I'm like trying to get back.
No, no, there's so many episodes in there, your thumb will get tired.
You have to just finish up, yeah.
All right, good stuff.
So Aubrey, what's our takeaway for today?
Yeah, this is so great.
If you're not an expert or even if you are but want to show that humility or lower someone's expectations, these phrases are perfect if you're asked for advice or help.
So use them, pick one to use today.
Yeah, it takes the pressure off and this also gives our listeners an option.
As you said earlier, Aubrey, if in your culture, this is more baked in, there are many cultures that bake in this type of humility even into the grammar.
I noticed this in Japan when I studied Japanese, there's more humility and hierarchy kind of acknowledging hierarchy baked into the language itself.
This gives you an option if you feel like it's in your culture, in your personality to use this.
You know, it's another option.
Yes, yeah, I love that.
It's so interesting to think about and if your personality, if you're in American business culture where this certainly isn't required, for the most part, we do appreciate humility.
We don't love someone who's just bragging incessantly but this isn't baked into our language as much so you can use these phrases to add it.
The one caveat, the warning, I would say, don't use it when it's not true.
Like Aubrey, you are an IELTS expert.
So if I asked you something about IELTS and you said I'm not an expert but I wouldn't want to hear that, right?
Because you're an expert, you know IELTS better than I do, better than most people.
So just be careful there.
That's a good point.
Well, you don't want to undermine yourself, right?
If someone needs your expertise and you are an expert, if you do one of these, then they're going to say, oh shoot, maybe I'm asking the wrong person.
If you are the right person, you don't want to use one of these.
So at work when someone is coming to you, if you're in the marketing department and you're doing the content copywriting and they come to you and they say, can you help me with this content?
Maybe don't use it there.
Right? Exactly. Instead, yes, absolutely, I got you.
Sure, 100%, I love that.
Good point. All right, Aubrey, and guys, by the way, if you are taking IELTS, then go over and check out Aubrey and Jessica on the IELTS Energy Podcast, right?
Yes, follow over there as well.
Jessica and I have a lot of fun.
We try to keep IELTS preparation fun over there.
Good stuff. Well, see you soon, Aubrey.
Have a good one. You too, see you next time.
Nice, bye. Bye. Bye.
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