873 : Why You Sound Smart at Work But Awkward With Friends

So this week I want to talk to you about something that, man, I can relate to so much. Why you sound smart at work but awkward with friends when you're speaking English? You see, I experienced this when I was studying Korean. I could speak professionally, but whenever I started speaking with my friends, I would get

strange looks. Why is this happening? I want to break this down. see at work, your English is impressive. You may even lead meetings and write respected

emails. Then someone, let's say they invite you to go and eat together, right after work. But suddenly you have nothing to say. You didn't get worse at English. You stepped into a room your vocabulary wasn't built for. I'm gonna say that again. You stepped into a room your vocabulary wasn't built for. You see here's the problem. You didn't choose your vocabulary.

Your circumstances did. You see, you needed English for work. Sure you absorbed work English. And I've had so many students over my time as an English teacher tell me this. To if I know the English for work for my job. I know the technical terms, whether it be medical terms or terms for law, I know the professional work English. You know the English

maybe even for your exams. You absorbed the academic English. Your brain is efficient. It builds what's required. But it ignores what isn't. Here's the result. You have a fully furnished office in your English brain, but an empty living room. The office in your brain is where the work English, the professional English, the academic

English lives, but the living room where the conversational English needs to be or the relaxed English is completely empty. I want you to think about this, where you have a doctor, a very intelligent doctor, who explains complex diagnosis, but each lunch alone because she doesn't have

conversational English in her brain. Or the MBA, a master's in business administration who crushed interviews, but can't banter with colleagues. Can't go and back and forth with colleagues having conversation, why? Because he knows business English.

Or the academic who presents to 500 people standing up front, very competent, but can't ask a simple question, what do you do for fun? It's the same pattern. One context is strong, while the other is almost empty.

The brain built exactly what was required and nothing more. You see, your brain, my friend, doesn't store vocabulary in one master list. Woo, I want you to catch this.

Your brain does not store vocabulary in one master list. Instead, it organizes words by context, by emotion, and by situation. Again, by context, by emotion and by situation.

Like a warehouse with separate rooms. Here's the work room and it's fully stocked. You need work words. You need words for your professional environment.

This room has words for days. Then we go to the social room, though. There are a few boxes in the corner. You can kind of see them there's small of them, not large.

You see, your professional words were learned in professional ways. You learn them with a professional mindset. your brain tagged them with formal energy. But at a casual dinner, your brain starts to search for words tagged relaxed, and that

tag does not exist. It only sees professional or it sees presentation. It doesn't see relaxed conversation. Chill, it doesn't find that tag.

It finds almost nothing because professional words are the only ones you've stored. But the professional words don't match the conversational situation, the relaxed situation. So let's say you go to a barbecue and you say, let's leverage this at a barbecue. That sounds like, oh, you're uptight.

You don't know how to relax. You see, social English is not simpler than professional English. There's a parallel system, right? Professional English is built for clarity in the professional environment.

While social English is built for warmth, developing connections, developing relationships, they're both very important, they're just in different rooms, different categories. Now you, my friend, very intelligent, don't forget that. You have been training one system, the professional English side, passing an exam, giving

a presentation, passing an interview, this side strong. This system is working, but the problem is you left the other one untrained. So you get to social environments and it's like being a deer in the headlights. Ah, you don't know what to say.

It's not because you're not intelligent. It's simply because you haven't trained the system for social situations. So what do you do when you're in this situation though? the solution you see, your brain already knows how to build contextual vocabulary.

It has a room for professional words. It has a room for professional expressions. It built professional English through years of what? Professional exposure. You hear that key word exposure. You exposed your brain. You exposed yourself to these environments that would require you to use the professional terms. So you didn't just store the professional terms,

you stored them and then placed yourself in situations where you would need to access them, retrieve them, we spoke about that a few weeks ago. Retrieving what you put in. You see, social vocabulary develops the exact same way, listen to me, It develops the exact same way.

You're putting in terms, but consistent daily exposure is required. Consistent daily exposure towards a natural context. You have these professional environments that you've been in. You have these professional situations where you're able to access those professional

terms. Now you need to expose yourself to social situations where the terms will also be needed the social terms. Now, it's not about memorizing casual phrases from a list. We talked about flashcards a few weeks ago as well. It's not about just memorizing casual phrases.

If you have no context, if you have no situations to attach them to, it's going to be no use. Encountering them repeatedly though, in real sentences, in real situations, this is when you'll see