AEE 2423: Why You Should Take This Episode to Heart
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This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2423. Why you should take this episode to heart. Welcome to the All Ears English podcast downloaded more than 200 million times. Are you feeling stuck with your English? We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection. With your American hosts,

Michelle Kaplan, the New York radio girl, and Aubrey Carter, the IELTS whiz, coming to you from Arizona and New York City, USA. And to get your transcripts delivered by email every week, go to allearsenglish.com forward slash subscribe.

On today's episode, Aubrey and Michelle share key ways to say someone doesn't have to follow your advice. This is a huge connection skill that you should pay special attention to whenever you want to give your opinion in English.

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Hey, Michelle. How are you? Good, Aubrey. So happy to be recording with you again. How are you, Aubrey? I am great. It's a beautiful day here in Arizona. I have a question for you. Yes. About food. I love to talk about food. Me too. Do you like your food to be salty? Do you add salt? And actually, my real question is, before you taste food, do you find yourself adding salt before you even taste it sometimes? Ooh, that's a good question. Well, I think I

I think I taste it before I add the salt. That's good. Unless I know for sure, but I have been known to... In the morning, I always have eggs, and before I try it, I always put salt on it. I think I do put too much salt on food. And in fact...

Just the other day, I salted some mushrooms that I was sauteing and Dan had to put them in the colander and wash the salt off. There's a fine line between the perfect amount of salt and then you go overboard. And then there was another time when my son, we were making a soup and we let him, we were going to let him put the salt in the soup.

And the top fell off and the whole salt fell in it. And we kept on trying to dilute it. And then Dan got a headache because he just kept on trying to have all the salty soup to see if he could fix it. We had to throw it out. Yeah, this is a total loss. We need to just toss it. I've certainly done that. I've made mashed potatoes way too salty accidentally. And I'm like, well, I'll just make more potatoes and add them. Yes. Because you don't want to just waste everything. Yeah.

It's true. It's true. How about you, Aubrey? Do you like your food salty? I do. I really like savory snacks over sweet snacks. Same. But I really like them together too. Like if I have popcorn, I want it with like some kind of sweet candy. I kind of love both or like a Coke, like a Coca-Cola with some savory foods because I do kind of like the combo.

So do you salt things before you try them? I'm curious. No, I asked you because this was my mother's pet peeve. When she would cook for her father, my grandpa, he would add salt before he tasted it. And then he would sometimes be like, this is way too salty. He's like, why are you adding salt before you even taste it?

Right, right. Yeah, I can see how that would be frustrating. So Aubrey, I'm so glad we're talking about salt today. We are going to be talking about an expression that is really, really a good one. And it deals with the word salt. What is this expression? It's to take something with a grain of salt. Take that with a grain of salt. This is a really fun idiom. I'm excited to dive into this today. Uh-huh.

So do you use this one, Aubrey? Would you say this is in your vocabulary? Absolutely. I use this a lot because we're going to dive into what this means. But when you're giving advice, some people, maybe if you have a little more ego or a little more confidence, they're going to say,

then you're giving advice willy-nilly without us giving any caveats. I am not that way. If I give advice, I'll be like, well, take this with a grain of salt or I'll say like, take this for what it's worth. I'll say that too. Almost every time I give advice, I'm like, you know, here's what I think, but you do you. Do whatever you think. You do you. I love that.

Um, so yeah, very, very good point. Um, willy nilly. I love that guys. That will probably be one of our bonus words. Absolutely. Yeah. If you have the app, you get all of these keywords, right? So if you don't be sure to download the app, allearsenglish.com slash app APP. We make it really easy. We highlight the really interesting keywords from every episode and you can just add them to your vocab list.

Awesome. Love it. All right. So let's dive deeper into this. So take it with a grain of salt. So yeah, it means don't completely believe something. Don't take something too hard. It's saying that what the person is about to say or some action shouldn't be taken as 100%.

You shouldn't take it too seriously. What do you think? Right. Often we'll say this if we don't have any actual scientific evidence for something. It's just based on our experience or our thoughts. Right. We'll often say this so that people aren't thinking that we're coming from a place of expertise. Right. This is just kind of my thoughts. Take it or leave it.

Right. Yeah, exactly. So when would we use this? So I mean, one that I can think of is before we give advice, like you were talking about Aubrey, advice that we're not 100% on. So I could say, so Aubrey, I'm not an expert on this. So take it with a grain of salt. But I really think you should look into getting more points on your credit card because you're missing out on benefits.

Nice. Yes, I just said this to my daughter. She's only 18. She's in a relationship and sometimes she'll ask me for advice. And I'm like, take this with a grain of salt because I did not have a serious relationship that young, right? I was older before I had a serious boyfriend. So I'm being really honest about the fact that I can give you advice or talk from my life experience, but I didn't actually go through what you're going through. Take it with a grain of salt.

Right, right, right. Very good. So, um, or what's another way that we might use it? Yeah.

Yeah, you can use it to make someone feel better about something that someone else said. So for example, oh, she can be pretty direct. Just take it with a grain of salt. It's not personal. Now, this is a good point because this has a slightly different meaning. It's more like don't get offended. Don't take it personally. Yeah. Right. If we take it with a grain of salt, we want to not be not let our feelings be hurt by something.

Right, exactly. So don't take it to heart. That's something you might hear somebody say. Don't take it to heart. Don't like let your heart be affected by this. And I think this is so with language learning. I've had to do this as I'm learning French and Spanish.

Often, we're realizing that what someone is saying, we can't take offense, right? We have to take it with a grain of salt. Maybe they're correcting our grammar. Maybe they're sharing that we knew an idiom, we used an idiom incorrectly. This happens. I try to take that with a grain of salt and realize they're just trying to help me improve and I'm grateful for the correction, right? If I took it seriously, if I took it to heart,

then that might really hurt my language learning because then I'm worried about making mistakes. I'm worried about people criticizing me like, no, take it with a grain of salt. Don't worry about it. Right, right. Yeah, exactly. I mean, and it could also be used to say something shouldn't really be believed. So my sister tends to exaggerate about her cooking. So take it with a grain of salt. It's good, but not amazing.

Oh, I love that. Yes. And with language learning, right? If someone corrects your English and be like, take it with a grain of salt, you don't need to worry so much about grammar mistakes, right? We're worried more about connection. So yeah, that's another place where you could give someone advice if they're feeling really down about their English learning. Be like, take it with a grain of salt. That's not the most important thing to worry about. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

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Okay. So Aubrey, do you tend to take advice or recommendations with a grain of salt? Or do you like to try things for yourself instead of just believing what you hear? How does it work for you? That's a really good question. I do think that I have gotten better about this. When I was younger, I would take things to heart. I would let things hurt my feelings.

And I have gotten better about, you know, recognizing that I can't change anyone's mind, but I can decide whether that affects me or not, whether that hurts my feelings, whether that offends me. So I think I am better at taking things with a grain of salt. I'll just let it like roll off my back and not bother me more than I used to, at least. What about you, Michelle? Yeah.

I think so too. I think as I get older, I'm, I don't know, I don't get offended that easily. There, you know, there are, it's funny, there are some instances where I start to kind of go, oh, I don't, you know, I don't know about that. And, and then all of a sudden it'll,

roll off and like I don't really care let it go yes whereas you know when you were younger you might have really been torn up about that right now it's like no I'm not gonna let it bother me they're a bigger fish to fry bigger fish all right guys uh also we want to remind you to hit the follow button wherever you are listening to all ears English

or the Business English Podcast, or IELTS Energy, because we don't want you to miss anything. Just make it easy. Let us bring the episodes straight to your queue so you can hear them. Absolutely. All right, let's dive into some other similar phrases that we use to say the same thing. One thing is we say, don't put too much stock in it. Don't put too much stock in something. So for example, we might say, she acts like a big New York expert, but don't put too much stock in what she says. She's really, really picky.

That's funny. Yeah, exactly. Or you could say, don't take it too seriously. Well, I'll tell you my opinion, but don't take it too seriously. I'm still learning about all this.

Yeah. Or don't take it at face value. Remember not to take what he says at face value. He's been known to stretch the truth a little. This is you're just warning someone to like, you know, don't take offense or like maybe don't believe them entirely because it might not. There might be some exaggeration here. Right. Right. Exactly. So Aubrey, should we put this together in a role play? Yeah, let's do it.

all right so here we are um we're not using all of them in this one um because i it

This is something that would be weird to say that over and over and over. We just did a role play with the word actually. Guys, if you didn't hear that episode yet, head on over. It was episode 2421, which was with the word actually. And there we were saying it's okay to use it 100 times in a role play. And you use it a lot in one conversation. But this one, we're not going to use all of these right now. So here we go. I am asking you for some help with a menu that I'm putting together for a dinner party. Oh, fun.

Okay, so do you think salmon is a good idea? Love salmon, but, and take this with a grain of salt, what about a veggie option? You think? Yeah, so many people are vegetarians these days. It just may be safer. But don't put too much stock in what I'm saying. You're the one who knows your guess. That's true, but it's a good point.

Yeah. Oh, I really like these. And it's true. You couldn't say, you know, they do all have the basically the same meanings. It'd be strange to just be repeating yourself. But right. I think my favorite of all of these is one we used at the beginning of the episode, which is take this for what it's worth. I say that the most often. It means the same thing. Like, take this for what it's worth. But I think there should be a veggie option has the same. Like, don't write much stock, in my opinion. But here's my advice.

Right. That's a great one too. Yeah. So, I mean, I mean, again, these are so good for connection, all of these, because you're kind of pulling back a little bit. You're saying, you know, you don't have to believe everything I say, but I do want to say my opinion. Um, so just a really good way of giving advice without, without,

kind of being a little safe about it. Yes. And if we look at the role play, this is done so well when I was like, love salmon, but, and take this with a grain of salt, what we sort of interrupt ourselves when we feel ourselves about to give an opinion to make sure that we're saying like, I'll totally fine with whatever you decide, but I'm going to give my opinion here. This is such a great phrase to soften it a little bit.

bit. I love that. And then I said, you said, don't put too much stock in what I'm saying. You are the one who knows your guests.

so it is kind of a tongue twister i feel like i sort of tripped over it as well don't put too much don't put too much stock in it yeah um you and you said you are the one who knows your guests so you you you're giving your opinion but you may you i may know that all of my friends love salmon right and that they're not vegetarian so you're trying to give me some guidance as to what you think is a safer option

But you're saying, but you know best, right? Yes. And that's really, I think, the biggest connection skill here is that when you give advice, when you give your opinion, you're creating this possible awkward moment when your friend doesn't go with your opinion. When they decide to do what they were going to do anyway, when they don't take your advice. And phrases like this take the awkwardness out of this. You're saying, I have no problem. I'm not going to be offended if you don't take my advice.

Yeah, I think that's really the key for this episode. The key takeaway for today is to give that person that feeling of, you know, if you don't have to take my advice, keep that connection going. Another episode that we want to guide you guys to is 2404, which was how mixing up your grammar makes you a better storyteller. So I think that was the fun one, right? You and Lindsay have talked about storytelling a lot. So guys, definitely check that one out.

out. So yeah, I think we really went into the takeaway already about how this is such a key moment for connection. Yeah, it's funny. I also want to share, I was just listening to Las Culturistas podcast, Amy Poehler was a guest. And she it was interesting. She said for a year, she made it a goal to never give advice unless someone asked for advice. And that whole year, no one asked her for advice. She's like, I've been giving all this advice without people asking for it.

So I was thinking about that a lot. And I think these phrases really help if you are going to share advice. But I think it's probably a good takeaway for all of us to to think about, you know, if we're sharing advice, if we're giving our opinion.

Is it welcome? Has it been asked? I think I do that a lot too, where I'm like, here, I'm giving my opinion that no one's asked for. That's very interesting. And now I'm curious to try it for myself. Yeah. We'll have to report back, right? How long is it before someone asks for your advice? Aubrey, we should do that. Let's do it. All right, guys. Well, thank you so much for listening to today's episode. We really appreciate it. And give this

Give this a try. Let us know how it goes. Absolutely. Awesome, Michelle. See you next time. All right. Bye, Aubrey. Bye. Thanks for listening to All Ears English. Would you like to know your English level? Take our two-minute quiz. Go to allearsenglish.com forward slash fluency score. And if you believe in connection, not perfection, then hit subscribe now to make sure you don't miss anything. See you next time.