The Science of Happiness: Lessons From NYU’s Most Popular Class

I feel like I'm like, totally naked in front of you. I feel like, but in a good way, yeah. I hear you. We have become so habitualized to living B plus lives. I mean, I think I was living AB plus life and I didn't realize it because there were so many aspects of it that from the outside looked like an A or an A plus. Life. You would have been around 45 and one day you would have been found yourself in your car crying uncontrollably and you would have said what have I done?

Sometimes the outside world is the one confirming to us our life is perfect and we know inside and we've got like this kind of, we know how much we are actually living the life we want. We know because when we're living it, we feel exquisitely alive. And so it usually is a crisis where people are fired or go through a divorce or have a breakup of some kind of, and they'll say, wait, OK, I can't take it anymore.

That's, I mean, look, there's four things that destroy you living your own life, or I call them the four Horsemen of dream destruction, but it captures these things. It captures self-care, recreation, pleasure and sex.

Susie, welcome to Tiger Sisters. So happy to be here. We're so excited. So Susie Welch has lived a dozen chapters. Editor in chief of Harvard Business Review, best selling author, professor at NYU Stern, and podcast host. Her hit course and new book, Becoming You, have become a movement pushing people to face the hardest question there is. Are you really living your own life or living through someone else's script? May I say that becoming you, the question it actually answers is

what should I do with my life? Which it leads you to ask, is the life I have right now the life I want? So it's all the really easy, fun questions. Yeah, Right. This is a flight day of public kind of conversation. Yeah, Yeah. There's more. OK, so Doctor Susie Welch. Yes, that's right. Doctor has spent her entire career cutting through the myths about money, power and love to help people live their lives with purpose. And also, we were. We've been playing it cool since

the beginning. But we're truly fans of yours, I guess. Really. Love everything you. Do we think you're so fabulous and we want to be you And I also want to get my PhD and I'm so like, there's just some OK, all right, all right, well. It's a mutual fan club right here, right? Big love in. And so in becoming you, you

introduce the value bridge and it's a framework that you've developed that helps you figure out who we are and what we want to do. And so we've shared our values bridge results with you. We've taken the test and please be honest. What is wrong with us and what is the thing you understand about what is right? Right, I know I can't wait to do this. I mean, there's it's you have very exciting results, very interesting. I was a little taken aback by

your results. And so we will go deep, deep dive into them. So the class I teach becoming you excavates three data sets, your values, your aptitudes and your economically viable interests because you need all of that data to synthesize and then come out with your purpose in in the class in one semester, the wait list was 800 students.

And so it was and now I and now I took it in mega sections because who is, if you can find for me the one person who doesn't ask the question, wait, what should I do with my life? Or is this the right thing? I don't know where that person is. So I put together a great team of engineers. It's like a matricians and developers and we created this tool, the values Bridge, which rank orders your values from 1 to 16 and it tells you which values you hold and how much you're living them.

Yeah. So we call that gap the authenticity gap. And So what I have now in front of me is the list of your values from 1 to 16 and how much you're actually living them. I think that I was a little bit surprised by the difference in your values.

So should we do it? Yeah. OK, let's. Dive. In and also just. I feel like I'm like totally naked in front of you. I feel like. But in a good way, yeah. I hear you. I hear you that there is this moment. And so you're wonderful to go ahead and do it here on the podcast. But you know, part of what you're doing yourselves is you're allowing people to be vulnerable and listening to you and you talk about all the

really big stuff. So it's not just young people who are going through it. I mean, there's people 40-50 years old who are sitting there saying, whose life did I just live? Yeah. OK. So that's into it. It's let's do it. This is office hours. Actually, it is. I'm psych. I love it. All right, Cheri, we'll start with you. OK. OK, so your number one value is something that we call radius.

And this is a value that reflects how much you want to change the world, how much you want to have systemic change. When I have in class students who present is what we would call social justice warriors, they always are #1 on radius. I have a daughter who's an artist and an animal rights activist. She's number one on radius.

And so, and thank God the man that she's about to marry is also that because this, if you have this value and you are marrying somebody who does not have it, I, I wish you well because this is a very strongly presenting value. So there's something in you that seeks systemic change. You're not satisfied with things staying the way they are. You have a, a dream of in some way changing the world. Does that feel real to you? It does.

I've been called a dreamer and actually there was a conflict my my boyfriend when I was in my early 20s. We both worked at the same company, but we had different views on how to approach our life. I was like, I have such a big dream of things I want to do through my career, create impact. And he's like, would you just be happy? Like living in the suburbs with just like a plain house and a dog? And there was so much derision in that comment, but I'm like what's wrong with what I want to

do? And I hope you are not still with this person. I'm not. I'm not. God is all I can say. I mean, and that's why I said that this value is so strong in how it drives, how we live and work, that if you do not share it with a partner. So I should point out that the values bridge the test itself has a functionality that if another person takes it and you both check a box, your values will come up next to each other and it will give you a conflict

or harmony score. So you and this young man would have had like a like 100% conflict on it. And I think when my daughter and her fiance took it, they're like, mom, you're home, come talk to us about our results. And as I was walking towards them, because the wedding's already planned, I was like, please, God, I pray to you. And they had, thank God, their top six values. Oh my. God. Yes, I like almost wept from now look, I I would have been

shocked if they weren't. They're essentially the same human being. So, all right, so. And I, I do think that her value of radius comes through very clearly actually in Tiger Sisters and is the core mission in Tiger Sisters. And a big reason why we're doing what we're doing is very much driven by her number one core value and radius. I want to say two things. 1 is, I think you're exactly right because you could have done anything you could have done. You could have been a product

manager. There's a million jobs, and you took the job which had high risk, right? You did start up but had the potential for the most impact. Now, radius is also a high value of yours. It's #5 so that's still a core value of yours. It's still very high. It's not as high as your sisters, but luckily, because you're working together, I'm very happy that you both have radius high up.

OK, All right, all right. So your second value is achievement, which is the desire to have success that other people can see. Now really interestingly, this makes you different than many people of your generation, because typically for people, how old are you? I'm 30. OK, Gen. Z, for instance, is hopping off at age 26. Achievement as a value is number 11. And so I have achievement as #2 as well. And this is the desire to have accomplishments and success that

other people can see. Either that's in you or it's not. And when I talk about achievement, a lot of time with my Gen. Z students, they're like, who needs that? And I'm like, I don't know, my whole generation did, but I was like, but I think actually it's skews at business schools quite high. I think Business School select for it. Let's see where achievement is for you. It's #4 OK, so you are both very high on achievement. And thus the name Tiger Sisters.

So I'm very excited about that. So very.

Now we come to one of the most controversial talked about values and this is a value that we that I had to use a Greek name for because it sets people's heads on fire. So the value, we call it eudaimonia in Greek, it means flourishing, but it captures these things. It captures self-care, recreation, pleasure, and sex.

OK, so pick from any of those. They all track together and you have it as #3 So for core value for you, there is this desire for, I don't know if it's self-care or if it's fun or recreation or which one of it does those parts. It is. Does that resonate for you? It does, yeah. And I saw that it's in conflict with my desire to achieve and to have. Affluence which comes next so wait, let's see where eudaimonia is for you now. Actually, I will say that you're out. Your eudaimonia was lower.

It was at 8 in the middle. And for me it's #15 so I have like, and I'll tell you this about the whole one of the beautiful things in my opinion about the values bridges. It allows us to talk about people's values without any judgement. You know, these are values and you can be higher on them or lower on them and their choices with consequences. And so when I tell people like, well, you pneumonia is number 15 for me, it's like, what's wrong with it? And it's like, well, my joy is

in my work and my achievement. And so I don't, I don't necessarily like want to like I don't even know what self-care is. Of course, generationally that's like, maybe my self-care is in my dogs, like the amount of fun

I have with my dogs. I think it is also a generational like reflection of us because I think like her generation, she's on the cusp of Gen. Z, She's a Zelenio. Like they're all about self-care and they're like work life balance is really important versus like, I feel like I went up through the, you know, investment banking, like finance world where it was like, you have to put like those things on the wayside in order to actually be successful at achievement or all those other things.

And. This came for you, right, which is, look, my students and many, many people take the values bridge and they get as top value eudaimonia and then right after they get affluence or achievement and then they're like that's the reason for the O feeling because those are those are in conflict with each other. And so you definitely look, the test is going to tell you where you've got your conflicts and your harmonies. Eudaimonia for you is 3.

It's not #1 and for it's, it's 8, then we have affluence, which

is the desire to have wealth. And I think again, there's a little stink off of this in the world, right? But why this is a choice. And if you're not hurting anybody, it's your value. I mean, I've plenty of students who have it is number 1 and it's high for me as well. And it, I think there's no harm in it. Sometimes people want affluence because they have it, it, it feeds another value. Yeah, like beholders and which we're about to come to because that was your number one value.

And we'll talk about it. We both have affluence in the top five. And then we have for you Sherry voice, which is the desire for authentic self-expression. It's like that. I want to be me. I want to self express. I don't want to be in a culture or an environment where I can't let my whole self be present. And again, this is for Gen. Z, the number 2 value.

So for you, voice is it's down at 10, which suggests to me that you have more comfort around fitting in to organizational cultures and to leaving some of your authentic self-expression not aside but to your private time. Like you don't feel the need. People who have high voice want to be themselves all the time. People with lower voice are like, look, there's a time where I can be myself and it's when

I'm. Well, I feel like I've had to do that my whole life in order to succeed, in order to, like, get where I am now. Versus like Cherie, ever since she was very, very young, she was always like a superstar. And she's always been even among supported. Yeah, she's like the the younger sister. She's the youngest cousin. She's always the superstar. Like, I don't know how else to say it. She has star power. And it was always, she always expressed her voice. That's right.

It was very much appreciated and loved and I think. Yeah, well, there's the, you know, there's the interesting comment. Because what I often see, especially with young women, women up until sort of the 40s, is they can have quite high voice, but their authenticity gap is massive. So they can have voices, number one. And the authenticity gap is 98%, meaning they want to do it and they can't. And I had a student come to a lot of times just crying, saying

look at this. And she showed me her results and voice was #1 authenticity gap like 9899%. And she said, I wish you could teach a class about how we can do this, how we can be ourselves. I don't even know how to do it. My culture has taken this ability away from me. And I said that I love the idea of a class on that. That's not, I can't teach that. That's not my area of expertise. But I cheer you on.

Well. I think so much of it is environmental to. And so when you say culture, my first thought was like work culture, like the work culture that Jean grew up in was basically, as she explained, it was pretty much to stifle yourself for the bottom line. Whereas we're growing up being raised in a tech company as my first job, it was very much like, be yourself, right? And we also had like one day off a month to, for you pneumonia,

right? To like, you know, explore something about yourself outside of work. People who have very high achievement, very high affluence go into investment banking and they have voice very low and they don't care if you have very high voice, you know, Goldman Sachs is going to be a different kind of fit for you. And so this is 1. So there's many, many good

reasons to know your values. One is to have this very candid conversation with yourself about whether you're living them and and if not, whose values you are living. And then the second reason is to say, am I working in the right place? Am I going to last here? Because if you don't have, if you have a mismatch on values with your organization, you just go to work every day in a suit that's three sizes too small and it stinks. Yeah, well, let's talk about beauty for a second.

Because it's your top value. It's. Her top value and she's embarrassed by it. Yes, I always know. So here's. What I say OK, I just feel like I have to explain it. Now let's talk about it for a second. First of all, a lot of people have this value. It's one of the oldest identified values by scholars. We call it beholderism. It it is the value that reflects how much you care about how things look, including yourself.

I always say that when people find out that this is their top value that they need to go into support group. OK. And so a many, many. I've done this work with many influencers because my life brings me into to contact with a lot of influencers. For almost every influencer, it's the top value. And I'm not surprised because there's something very visual about being an influencer that how things look and sound. I will say that to go deeper than that, Beholder ISM is often

a proxy for desiring harmony. OK, you want things to look beautiful. And my feeling about that is there's not very much we can control in this world. Not very much we can control, but we can control our environment and we can control ourselves. And I often think that's reflected in High Beholder olderism. Now, I don't know where your olderism is coming from. I think that's so. True, you, you look beautiful, so that's part of it.

But this desire that things should have a certain harmony, that the world just works better when things are, you know, elevated. I mean, there used to be a store in New York's that that sort of just beautiful interior designs. And I used to call it the Palace of Watch because I walked in there. I was like, I want everything. I want my house to look like this. And then when my test scores came back and Beholders was for for me, I was like, yeah, I know.

I'm the daughter of an art architect and an artist. My home is my palette. It it's like I paint on, you know, my, my, you know, canvas is my home. And so so Beholders intends to skew. Either you have it very high or you have it very low. I think in some ways it's actually very much of A relief to be able to like put a, a word to it, a name to it. Because there's just so many things about me, like, you know, growing up in middle school, I would borrow like dozens of

books about interior design. Like when I was like 12 years old and just non-stop read all these books about interior design and I was like a freak of a 12 year old. Like who does? That I did that. Yeah. I did that. Well, first of all, my dad was an architect. We had tons of books around the house. But when Architectural Digest would come, I would, like, go through the pages. Yeah. Like a zombie. Like like upset.

Yeah, and my homes are really curated, you know, very specifically to me, but I really care. And if I walk into the room and like the flowers are of color that's not vibing the rest of the room. I like will carry them into the kitchen saying this is upsetting me. I mean, I'm really this is your beholder ISM It's it's and the great thing is like just celebrated. So many cool people have beholders are very high. So it's not it's and again, no value is good or bad. It's just you.

Yeah, but it's very good to be able to explain to people I have super high beholders and just bear with me while I sort of change this place getting right. Yeah. And I think it's kind of I also, I've always loved art growing up. I love like all different expressions of art. I think it's yes. I really, really just like deeply appreciate the sublime.

Yes. And. That's exactly it. I don't know how else to explain it. Like back when you know, you could see all the runway shows for free on vogue.com, like I would every, every fashion seats, I would like pour through all of the runways like and like look at them one by one and just form my own opinions. And like that was my happy place. Just say I want to give you some gratuitous advice, which is that the next time you get serious with somebody, give him the test.

Make sure his beholderism is up there like yours because I think it gets really hard in a relationship when one person has high beholderism and the other just doesn't get it. Yes, it's because it bumps into everything. It sort of bumps into where you choose going to a restaurant. It bumps to like what your house looks like. It bumps into like where you vacation. It just bumps into everything. So check out that. Check out Belovedness and check out Beholderism.

OK, that is so crazy because even before I took this test, I said something to Sheree the other day about this, where I was like, Oh yeah. Like, you know, I've been on a couple days with this guy. I was like, I just don't know if he really like appreciates some of the things that I appreciate like. Like if I look nice, like will he even appreciate that? Like what's the point if he doesn't appreciate me looking? I know, I see, I know I secretly think I developed a dating app by accident.

I mean, I was like, I think oops, but I mean, I think that I like I said to you about my daughter and her soon to be husband in two weeks, you know that their top six values were identical. And they are weirdly like happy because they just everything. I He was reminiscing about the first time he and met her and he went back to the office after they had lunch for the first time. And he said to the people he's working with, I don't know what

just happened. And it's like when you meet somebody who's got your exact values, you have this feeling like what just happened. But you sort of saying if I even elevated my beholderism and and sort of showed my beholderism would even care is a bit of a red flag. Yeah. It's like the worst guest we ever had on you. Know the best, the best? Well, let's see, We'll put this to the test. Well, I think it's interesting Susie, what you said about control because I think that's. True.

I mean, of course you love you love art and beauty and you love flipping through those, you know, magazines. But I think there's something to be said about control, yes, like having some sort of control over your life, your environment when this in this world, like what can you really control? That's right. I think beholderism for people is absolutely a way to make order of a world that can feel very chaotic. Yeah, yeah.

And. Especially but sometimes it's just love and beautiful things I don't want to buy you know like sometimes you know it's just cuz you love beauty and it's OK to love beauty I. Think it's both for you. Yeah, yeah. All right. So those are your, those are your top values.

Let's just talk briefly about your, your bottom 2 values because sometimes those tell us a lot of things also. OK. So your bottom that your lowest value is something we call belonging, which is sort of it's like kind of community, it's clubs, it's hanging with friends, it's just wanting to be part of affinity groups. And so oftentimes people with high voice as you have have low belonging and so or does that sound right to you?

Yeah, I, I think so. It's just I, I don't really believe in like groups or like group dynamics. I'm like much more like. Deep one-on-one relationships with people. Right. So this is 100% tracks with what you're saying. Your second to bottom one is place, meaning if it's a low value, it means you could live anywhere that you're not OK. I have to live in this one city. Like for me, place is very high because when I leave New York City, I hyperventilate and feel

like I must get right back. And so I love to travel, but I'm like, it's not New York. And that gives me very high place. And so it sounds to me like with this value that you're, you're fine with where you're living and but you're not like it does not have to be one place. I think so, especially recently with so much moving like leaving Palo Alto, coming to Lai. Think I'm in a time in my life where place will not rank high. Yes, I'm looking right now.

I'm looking where your belovedness is. So let's talk about the value of belovedness before we look at your values. And so belovedness is a very interesting value because it reflects how much you want to be in an intimate partnered relationship. And it's very interesting to hear the cultural narrative about how much you should want marriage. In a way, I mean, think this is about a, a relationship that is

marriage or like marriage. And women like us have gone through professional schools and we've been told it's the career, it's the career and many. And that's fine and it's true for many of us, but often times there are women who do not feel able to say, but I also really want to get married and shows up in their results. It shows up and they come in and they've been like girl bossing it, go bossing it. And then belovedness pops in at #1 and there's a 98% gap.

So for you, if you don't mind me saying your belovedness is at 8, which sort of puts it in the middle. Like you might want a partner relationship, but it's not your driving organizing principal. You're not choosing your job or your location or your weekend activities on finding this partner. That you're a partner for your life. Yeah, yeah. Sounds true. I think that's right where I am in in this state in life. Shall we see where belovedness is? Yeah. OK. And answer is it's 11 pretty

low. So yeah, let's hear what are your thoughts on your belovedness. So my. Thoughts are that I am surprised because I consider myself to be like a very romantic person and I like I love the idea of romance. I love being in romance. I love being in partner relationships. I think that it's low now because I recently broke my engagement about a year ago with someone that was together for eight years. So I think it's more of like a snapshot in.

Time exactly why? Yeah. So for me, belovedness was very high. And then my husband died, and it went to, it went to it's #16 for me now. And I think when you've been through a seismic event involving love, belovedness will shift. And you have deprioritized it because of what was certainly, in some level, a traumatic event for you. Yeah. And so I would not be surprised if we were to revisit with each other in six months or a year that it would move back up.

Yeah. And I think it's also a response to, I feel like in the past over, you know, the course of that eight-year relationship, it was very high right values. And I think maybe it was. I was like. Overweighting it, I think it might have been over expressed, right? And it may be one of the reasons I don't want to go, you know, get too personal. But it may have been over expressing. It was part of why the engagement ended up breaking.

Yeah. And I mean, if you had to guess, while you're in that relationship, belovedness was maybe one or two probably over expressed by quite a lot. Do you? Can you, in your mind's eye, imagine what your partner's belovedness was? Definitely not as high because he's a much more like even keel. He's just not naturally like a romantic person. He's just like very even keeled, like not very expressive at all

in terms of emotions. I think like radius, belovedness with your partner should be about the same level. So if you both have belovedness in the top five, fantastic. If you have it in the bottom 5, also fantastic because you both are going to prioritize the relationships, the amount. But woe to the couple where the one person has belovedness in the in the top and the other has it in the bottom, and all you're going to do is fight about how important the relationship is.

Actually love this framing like we love frameworks just like you. I actually think this is really interesting because I think recently I experienced a relationship where the, the other person, this guy like belovedness was super high on him. It's like he was just like super expressive with how much he liked me. He was like really open with like PDA, like he just wore his heart on his sleeve and I was

very receptive to that. Like I was, it was very positive to experience such a different expression from the other person. And it's like more aligned with I think. What's right for me. I think your natural belovedness is quite high.

I think right now it's down lower because you're working out. And now our values that we think are pretty stable from sort of age 25 on, because a lot of things go into forming our values and then they all go into a big Stew and mix it up. So what goes into forming our values, our parents, our culture, our society, experience trauma. And then by each 25, you kind of are who you are. But then a seismic life event

can switch our values around. Someone's having a child, going through divorce, I mean, all these different things. But what changes is how much we're living them or not living them. And the goal is to be living them. But that's kind of the work of our life is to work out the conflicts and to live our values fully. But becoming you, the methodology itself says, doesn't say go live your values. It says figure out your values, then figure out your aptitudes.

Because you could want to be Céline Dion or whatever and have a very bad voice. And so you have to also know, you can know your values, but then you have to know what you're good at and not. And I by that I mean your cognitive strengths and also your personality strengths, because you could be good at a job because of your personality and you can be so bad at a job because of your personality.

That's, I mean, look, there's four things that destroy you living your own life. I called them the four horsemen of dream destruction and they all start with ES. So the first one is expectations, which is around like what your family's expecting and what you expect. Then the second is expedience because sometimes it's just easier. They come and they recruit you or the job sitting there, it's your next door neighbor's brother has a job, you can fill it.

It's not really perfect for you, but it's easy and you just do things that are easier. And we go against our values all the time because it's just the path of least resistance. And the world is pretty hard anyway. Yeah, the easier thing, yeah. Then there's events, And events are like, you got laid off, so you do something else and then it's not quite right, but you just stay. And events can push us. Getting married, having a baby,

there's all sorts of events. And then the final is economic security. And we make all sorts of decisions based on money, even though sometimes money doesn't actually matter to us all that much. I mean, for Gen. Z, affluence is not actually all that high. Stability is much higher, much higher. And we have a value for stability. It's called scope. Let's see where you are with scope. That's about, if you have high scope, you want a very big,

highly stimulating. You don't really care that much about just stability for stability sake. OK, So John, you are at six, meaning it's not a it's it's actually pretty close to the top that you want stimulation, excitement, you want big life. That's what this would say.

And you on scope, it's pretty low for you, you know, that's there's something about it tracks kind of with your eudemonia low scope and eudemonia track together in that you have a more comfort with having a life where you have some predictability that right. Yeah, I think so. I mean, like, I like the occasional occasional, occasional, like, oh, this is a new experience, right? But then I'm like, oh, I can come home and go to my gym classes. Yes, and that's right.

You know that's definitely showing up here, right. But and we all have a different level of want and need and desire for disruption. And people with very high scope are like, I'll take the chaos because the fun of it or the excitement of it or the. I have a student who had scope is her number one value. And she said, I just want to touch everybody's brain, OK. And that I remember saying that I was like, if I could, you are the poster child for high scope.

And and she's has a life where she's designed everything around that. And luckily her husband has high scope also. Otherwise, I think he's quite miserable. Yeah. How do you feel? Do you feel seen? I feel so understood. I feel like with the top five and also my bottom 2 that we went through, I'm like I in taking this test, it was very much like I poured my heart into it, answered everything super honestly and the results like reflect that I think. It's such good data to have,

isn't it? And it allows you to talk to each other. Well, this is my scope value speaking. Well, look, this is, you know, with my high, you know, with my high value of radius, I done it. I mean, it's a, it is a, it is a way to understand yourself and

then understand those around you as this language you know, So we. Actually, we say that all the time. It's like having the vocabulary to actually express something. That's what's really powerful about values, which is it gives you the vocabulary to put a name to something that you know in your heart. Yeah, but you're like, how do I express this? And then now that we have this shared vocabulary, you we can actually like. Like the word eudaemoniae? Never knew that word before. Yeah.

Look, this happened. It's. Unintentional that we named it the bridge, right, because when you have a language you can build a bridge to understanding I mean, we struggled with the name, but the minute the bridge came to me I was like, that is the name. And when I was guest lecturing at Stanford last year, a student came up to me afterwards and she said, you know, all of your work reminds me of this Wittgenstein quote. You know, you're at Stanford when somebody comes up.

She said, reminds me of this Wittgenstein quote. The limits of my language are the limits of my world. And I said that's exactly right. Is this opens up a world of a self-awareness and compassion and conversation, which is the thing I dig about it. So.

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going through our values bridges with us. We want to turn the conversation now to you and we talk about money, power and love on the Tiger Sisters podcast. And we want to go through some of those questions and, you know, go through your brain and learn a little bit more about how you think about these things. I can't wait. Great. So in Becoming You, you talked about how the process usually

starts with some sort of crisis. Like we talked about maybe a traumatic event, 1/4 life crisis or midlife or some kind of reckoning. Why is it that it often takes a big seismic shift for this to happen? Because we have become so habitualized living B plus lives or B, you know, we can bump along into life that's kind of AB or B plus for a really long time and just keep telling ourselves something's going to change or it has to be that way.

And we just let it go. I mean, and sometimes we let it go until we're in our 50s or 60s and then we say, wait a minute, the clock is actually ticking now and I'm going to fix it because B is not good enough. I want to just try it. But other people go all the way to the end that way. And so sometimes we have to be shoved into the kind of self

examination that that we need. And so it usually is a crisis where people are fired or go through a divorce or have a breakup of some kindness and they'll say, wait, OK, I can't take it anymore. It's no longer B or B plus. It's actually C or C minus or D or it feels like F. And I mean, I kind of troll on Reddit. There's all these fees where people are like, I hate my life

and everything. And I'd like, you know, just, I have to hold myself back from typing in just do becoming you because they would ban me. But but there are people who hit a crisis point and that's when they start the work. And you know, my loving advice is to do it before that happens and save yourself the time and and do it before it really becomes an absolute crisis. As a tiger sister, hearing you say AB or B plus life, I'm like like I need to clutch my Pearl.

I know I. Know, But, you know, people do it, yeah. And they do it for a really, really long time, and it feels OK and they make a lot of excuses, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I was living AB plus life for a long time and I didn't realize it because there were so many aspects of it that from the outside looked like an A or an A+ life. Like all of the, you know, just like, oh, like you look like you're in a beautiful couple and you have this incredibly

high-powered job. Like you live in LA. Like there's just so many things that I think I almost let society or societal expectations like dictate and like tell me that I was living an A life or an A+ life. And it wasn't until I'm actually really like grateful now for that sort of like crisis moment. Because it's like you said, it's not until you like sort of like crash that you're like, wait, why was I on this road in the 1st place? Like, why was I driving down this road?

Like it would have been a, it would have kind of been like a really underwhelming life that was like not an expression of my true self. That's right. You would have been around 45 and one day you would have been found yourself in your car crying uncontrollably and you would have said, what have I done? And and so you do have to kind of crash sometimes.

The outside world is the one confirming to us our life is perfect and we know inside and we've got like this kind of, and then you, we hear all this confirming stuff. Oh, you got it all. And it comes from our friends and our parents and they are just checking the boxes for us. But we know how much we are actually living the life we want. We know because when we're living it, we feel exquisitely alive.

And that is so good. But if you've never experienced it, you don't want to go back and get it because you don't even know what it is to begin with. So a lot of stuff gets in the way of us going big. Yeah, we had an episode recently where Jean and I talked about settling. Like how do you know first settle? I saw that episode. It was great. And I thought, wow, this is all about the four horsemen of of value destruction.

If you want to know what which one of the horsemen is taking away your life, we actually have a free quiz you can take. It takes 2 seconds and it will tell you, oh, it's expectations, it's expedient or it's all four and it settling is real. Yeah. So Susie, on this podcast we

talk a lot about balancing ambition and fulfilment. So when it comes to money, what do you think people most often get wrong about the connection between wealth and happiness? And like there's so many, you have so many terms within. Yeah, I know. It's like it's a whole industrial complex around this. OK, so first of all, can I just take issue with the word balance, which I don't actually believe in because it suggests that you should have the same

amount of everything. You should have, you know, work and your personal life should be balanced, but who's who's deciding what that balance is? You know that you should have everything should be in balance. Like, you know, I'm, I want to work all the time and I want tons of money, OK, and I don't and I and who's to tell me I should be having more fun? Go take a hike. I don't want to I don't want to go water skiing this weekend. This is my fault.

This is, this is, and also that's like balance my. So I worry about people believing that there's some kind of perfect for everybody kind of balance. Like you should be doing more of this or doing more of that. It's actually super personal. And Jensen Huang of NVIDIA was asked recently, how's your work life balance? And he said, I love my work life balance. I work all the time. And I mean, I was like, preach. Now I get it that that's not for everybody.

And I don't want people to judge me about my work life balance. Just like I don't want to judge anybody. And like I have 4 adult children, their view about working and balance is different than mine. And I say that's perfectly fine. It's groovy. Live your values, live your life, but understand there are

consequences. If one of your top values is affluence, it's, you know, and you want to also have a lot of eudaimonia, you're going to have to figure that out because they don't typically track together unless you have inherited wealth. I think that the thing you've got to figure out is not how to have balance, but you've got to figure out what is your balance. You know, how much do you want

of each one of these? This is why I like the rank ordering because sometimes people say, Yep, that's it. I can't lie anymore. I want, I want luminance, I want fame, I want money, I want achievement. And look all the way down here is Eudaimonia. I've been lying about this to everybody. And I want the permission to say to people, I'm not playing with you this weekend. I'm going to work because I like it. And we got to give ourselves

permission to have the balance. We want to have our definition of it. I just had a light bulb moment right now that let me see if I can process this live. But I think it has to do with my belonging being literally my last value. Like when I'm like scrolling on Instagram and I see people's stories of like, Oh my God, they had this Bachelorette with like 20 women there. I'm like, oh that's nice. Like wonder what that must be like to be like surrounded and have that community.

And it's gorgeous. And there's these photos and then like for a second I feel like bad cuz I'm comparing myself to that person. But if we go back to my values bridge, I'm like, I don't really care for that. That's not how I want to live my life. Before social media you wouldn't even seen those pictures so you wouldn't have cared. I mean I think it's social media puts it in your face but belonging is not a high value as

yours. It doesn't mean that you don't want some of it, but you wanted a lot less than some other things like radius is your top value. You would trade off clearly having high impact work with hanging out with a bunch of bridesmaids. OK, It's my daughter is #1 radius. She's a total person wants to change the world in a lot of different ways. She's about to get married. No bridesmaids, OK, Let alone no bridesmaids parties, no bridesmaids, OK. I mean, they're it just that's

not how who they are. And her husband, her soon to be husband also has a high radius. It's the most, you know, this is a wedding that's actually about their value of radius. I mean, it's about and everybody there is going to be like that. It's going to be it's going to be quite the event that there's not there's no partying beforehand. There's no like, you know, bachelor party. Are you kidding me that they find that very, you know, that's just not who they are, right? So.

It's it's not who I am actually, and I don't know why. I mean, like, yeah. 'Cause there's, there's societal culture, now you can just hold up your values, bridge results and say any other low belonging people here like me, you know, so OK. So our next question on money is if you could sit down with your younger self, what's one piece

of Money Advice you wish you had known earlier? There's 2 great pieces of Money Advice that I would love to share. The 1st is there's no last best deal. This has saved me from so many stupid purchases, so many stupid decisions. Is the whole idea of the person who's trying to get you to buy something is to get you into a frenzy where you think it's the last best deal. I mean, that's what advertising does. That's what Realtors do. That's what all sorts of people do.

And you have to sort of say, Nope, there actually is no last best deal. There's always going to be another deal. And and what if you're a person who's interested in investing the whole idea of the people trying to sell you the stock or whatever it is that you're investing it is to make you. I feel like it's the last best deal. And so this for Frame, there's no last best deal, has saved me so many wrong turns, especially around real estate, right? There's never going to be a

better house than this. It's never going to be at this. And you know what there is, there's going to be another house and there's going to be another good deal. So that's very, very centering. The second one piece of advice,

I think I learned it from watching people around me and people now tell me it's one of the most distinctive characteristics about how I think about money is, is to just to fight back against the sun cost fallacy and just to the cut your losses. I made a mistake. I made a financial mistake. Get out, get out now. And so this has happened with real estate. I want time bought a house. I thought it was the right house and it I was there for two years.

I thought this is in the wrong place and it's the house doesn't feel right to me for a bunch of different reasons. I had fixed it up and poured some real money into it. And I like remember calling my friend saying I'm selling this house, who they'd all visited it and they were like, how can you do that? And I said, because I made a mistake, I'm out and I may take a hit, but there's no point pouring more money into this pit.

And so I think some cost goes across so many different financial decisions and it goes into sort of job decisions as well. And so cutting your losses and the ability to openly say, I made a mistake, I own it, hello world, I made a mistake, I own it and then move on. I, I think with my children, I taught them that. And when I see them make wise decisions, financial decisions, I think, OK, that's one thing I taught them.

Yeah, that second one is so powerful and I think it's a lot harder than what you give yourself credit for because. We are wired. I mean, this is what the work of decision scientists would show you. We are wired to have some cost and love for just pouring more money on our problems, thinking we're saving face, we can fix it. It is so common that to fight it is a discipline. But it's true about relationships too. Yeah. And it feels like, in a way, like you're going against

yourself. Absolutely. Like made this decision. You had done so many things following that decision to reinforce that that that was the right decision. So then like changing and doing the opposite of that or reversing it, You're like, who am I? It's like almost like you have to. But it's a lot of badass thing to do. Yeah. I mean, it really is. It's like to really own your mistake and publicly say to everybody, look, I made this mistake. I I took the wrong job.

I moved to the wrong city. I you know, I invested in this wrong thing. I'm getting out. I'm getting out now, and I'm going to take my hit and I'm going to move right on with the lesson learned is so empowering. And the earlier you learn to do that, the better. It's really powerful, yeah. And at the end of the day, I think when people see that, they respect you more for it, not

less. And you actually sort of get this incredible kind of rush off of it yourself, saying like I did that because you realize how hard it is. Look, it's all part of the Wisdom Project. That's what I say about gathering. Wisdom here. Wait, I'm going to, I'm going to adopt that. I'm all. Part of the Wisdom project covers up all your mistakes. I mean, I and they are that is how I've gotten my wisdom, not from what I did right. You know what I did wrong, which

there's a long. List and then OK, last note

about this, I feel like that there's no last best deal. I feel like that actually can also be applied to love and romance. Absolutely. I mean absolutely you. Because when you think this is might be the last guy or girl, you settle, OK, And then you say, look, nobody else is coming along. I was, I was friends with a woman. She was in a relationship for a really long time. She was 55. And he was terrible to her. He was terrible to her. And I said, why are you staying?

And she said, who else is there going to be? And she said, I just got to he's going to be the best guy I can get. And it was it was disaster to see the relationship. Well, I would go home to my husband and say one day he's going to leave her for a younger woman. And, you know, she should have cut her losses and so forth. And that is exactly what happened. And she actually now has happily found somebody else. And so it all worked out.

It took a while, but we do this in relationships all the time. We say, look, I'm just not meeting that many other people. This is the last best deal if you're settling, as you have said before in the podcast, that never leads anywhere. It never leads anywhere good. It just does not. There's no last best deal, There's no, there's no last best deal. I'm going to be repeating. This it's great for my T-shirts, right? We it should be our mantra in the morning.

We like wake up and look in the mirror. Yeah, we no last there's no last deal to ourselves. I love. That I love. It should we jump into love. Yeah, let's jump into love. You can ask me about love, okay? I know that it's intensive, but yeah, you can go ahead and ask me about it. Don't be afraid if you talk about money, power, and love. Don't be afraid to ask me about it. It's okay. So Susie, you and your late

husband Jack both had such storied careers in the professional realm. I'm sure you get this. You know this question a lot. And this was long before you you got married. So how did you balance being partners in life while also collaborating on work on such a high level? Yeah, it was intense. I mean, it was really intense because we live together, love together, raise the children together and worked together. And the way we did it was we had very similar values.

We talked constantly. You've never met 2 Chad more chatty people than us. I mean, it was we, we were both very verbal and so we could be talking about things all the time. We also knew our lanes. And this was huge. Like I was never CEO of GE. I never managed 400,000 people. And he had never written a, you know, book after book after book.

He'd never edited. He had never done a lot of the stuff that I knew how to do. And we agreed that we deeply respected each other's areas of expertise and we let each other be good at what they were good at. And we believe that we would really learn from each other. And he had like the, I think what really helped was he had the deepest respect for me. He used to say to me all the time, you're the smartest person I've ever met. And I'd be like, that could not possibly be true, Jack.

And so he respected me and I really respected him. And that helped a lot. But you know, I think that at the end of the day, he had very high agency as a value. He he was used to being a CEO. He drove every bus. He was in charge. And I have very low agency. I'm super collaborative. I am always kind of like, I think every idea should be heard. I love consensus. This is all kind of part of my personality. And I think it was very fortunate that he had high agency and I had low.

I think it in our marriage, had both of us been very high agency, it would have there would have been a slightly different story. And I just, I had this technique when we disagreed, which is often shocking to other women when I mention it, but I did it for a really long time. And then one time I mentioned it in passing and it freaked out the group of women I was with. OK. So when he started saying something that I really disagreed with my inside my head, my mantra was maybe he's

right. And I didn't get my Dukes up and I didn't like start to disagree. I just thought maybe he's right. I'm just going to hear him out with the assumption he might be right. And so sometimes he'd come at me with like, really like, we're not going to XY and Z vacation. I've changed my mind. We're taking the kids to blank. And my immediate visceral reaction would be something like the worst idea I ever heard. It's wrong on so many levels.

And then I would immediately transfer to maybe he's right. And I would say, why do you say that? And I would have this very open mind about about it. And then he would pour it all out and I would hear him. And sometimes he was right, but other times, because I had a really good attitude, non defensive attitude about it, I would say, OK, well, here's where we differ. And I would go through the ways that we that we differed.

And a lot of times he would say, oh, God, I never thought of that, Susie. All right. But it was my lack of defensiveness that allowed those conversations to happen. And I think it feels like, you know, OK, you know, to use a word that sets people's heads on fire, it sounds kind of surrendered, right? Like the surrendered wives are always like, whatever you say, dear is right. But I just went in with the supposition that he loved me. I trusted him.

He wanted what was right for us in the marriage, and he'd never hurt me. And that maybe he was right. And it's not. So it's not like we didn't disagree. But when he came out at me, I always started from a stance that I wanted to hear what he was saying. Wow, when I hear that two things come to mind. 1 is like the immense amount of self because like the way that you described it, it's just like of course, like everyone's first instinct to be like, what are you talking

about? So. Also, coming from a person where like I feel like the three of us are often right, like we we don't like, you know, yes, posit our our opinions that are not well researched. Right, right. We're not impossible. Exactly right. So yeah, the self regulation. To like have that immediate thought and then to stop yourself. Yeah, yeah. And then, yeah, to bring like a new perspective.

And then I think the second thing is assuming good intent, I think that's so. It's so deep and it's huge. It's actually just as a life less changes everything. And I think I I learned that a lot from Jack. He was really that way. Jack just he, you know, that cliche, you know, strangers, a friend you just haven't met. He totally thought the whole world was just waiting to be his friend. He like went out into the world every day, like we're all the friends I can meet.

I remember going to a party one time where we didn't know anyone and he said, could anything be more exciting? And this was so his personality. And I agree. I like, like meeting people too, But assuming good intentions can change the trajectory of your life and your career. It can. And you know what?

Sometimes you get burned, sometimes people don't have good intentions, but many, many more times you end up having relationships and conversations that you wouldn't have had if you went in with your Dukes up. So, OK, Susie, you recently said

on your podcast that you are ready to go on and write the next part of your story. Yeah. Do you remember saying that? Yeah. Or you're going to die for it. OK, go for it. Do you remember the next thing you said? I thought I might go on a date. Yeah, I did it. We went on a date. Can we talk about it? Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, here's the terrible truth, right? The date reminded me of how much I love my. Husband. So it was that terrible. Yeah, OK. It's terrible. Yeah. OK.

Like nothing to recommend widowhood, OK. But I would say that it, I had a couple of days afterwards where I was sad because he was a perfectly good guy. I'm a very nice guy. And actually we had some things in common, really, some things really in common. Like, we both like every single day, like get the same feed from this, like, devotional. And we both read that one. And so we had some serious things in common. And, and it was a perfectly lovely conversation.

But sort of two hours into it, he said to me, I do not think you're ready. And I said, yeah. And he said, I just don't think you're in a place in your life where you're ready for this. Are you ready? He said, Are you ready to be loved by a man besides Jack? And I thought, how astute. I thought, like, you know, he's really smart. And I said, I actually don't know the answer to that question. He said, well, why don't you give it some thought?

Are you already friends? No, I, we had, but we knew people in common and but he knew enough in those two hours because I actually realized that I referenced Jack like 30 three times on the date. And so it's kind of different when you've not been divorced, right, Because sometimes when you've been divorced, you're ready to start again and you're like turning the page. But for me, like I lost the person I loved. So I did it.

I did go on a date. And I mean, I'm not adverse to another one, you know, not with that person because he's right, but my I have this kind of this desire with at my daughter's wedding to dance with somebody besides like my son, which is really I like I was at AI was at a wedding with him and Eva the other day. And like, I know they don't want me dancing with them. They want to dance with each other. Like who wants mom in the in the

group, right? And then I was at another wedding and I was there with my daughter and her husband and they said, let's dance. And I said, I don't want to do that to you. So I would kind of like to dance. So that's it's not like I want to get married again, but it would be fun to have somebody to. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I love dancing. Yeah, and I like, So do I? Yeah, that's really fun. I miss that a lot. No, I know Jack. I used to dance all the time.

Yeah, I know you want the like. It was fun. Feeling. Yeah, it was really fun, yeah. Thought I missed. Well, I mean, you did the brave thing. It felt brave. In fact, the morning of, I tried to cancel, yeah, but I called the friend who did the picks up and I said I think I got. And she said, Nope, you can't do that, not going to do that for

you. And so I did it it as I was walking toward it and I saw him on the sidewalk, I was literally the inside my head I was saying like, turn around, leave, leave, leave, leave, run, run, run, run. I mean, I was it felt really brave. I kind of hated it. But then the minute we said hello, I was like, I can have a conversation with anybody. Yeah, I'm just going to do sure care, right? I didn't give them the values bridge.

I did not. But I, but I was doing it in my head and, but I, so I'm not adverse to, it's not like I feel like, OK, never again. I'm never going to do that again because hope springs eternal. But I, you know, it's hard, right? Because I had a great marriage. I had a great, great, great marriage. And so it's like a very hard act to follow. Well, I hope you're proud of yourself. Thank you. Truly. It's kind of like you were saying before. It's gathering wisdom, yes, right.

Yeah, OK, I'll, I'll take that. Maybe I'll say I'm a little proud of myself. I mean people have been it's been 6 years, right? So people have been pushing me this towards this. I mean, I have a girlfriend who was widowed recently and like 6 months later she went on her first date and I was like, how you doing that? And she said you got to get out there Susie. And I was like you do, I mean. But I mean, you're kind of building an empire now too, so you have all these different,

you know? What I mean, I'm building a business, OK, and I love building a business. I've always loved business so much and becoming you is kind of taken off in a way that is like, you know, started with me teaching this class and next thing I know there's like, you know, people doing it all around the world. And since since the values bridge came out May 6th was really about 6566 thousand people have taken it. That's beginning of a business, would you say?

Right. And so and we've got other great products that are coming down the Pike. And so I'm building something. Building is fun. Yeah, and talk about radius. Yeah, but right. So many people just live. You know, you think you're touching emails and DMS every single day from people who say it changed my life this way, it fixed my life this way, it did this for my son or whatever. And I'm like, Oh my God, yes.

I'm addicted. I was just going to say that we get those two and it's an addicting field. It is like it puts you in a float. It's like a drug. It is. I can't stop doing this. Like, look, all these people are, I don't know, like relying on me, sort of like there's all these other people in the world that haven't been most of what we do and we can help them. It's unreal. It's the feeling of it. And when my kids say to me you've got to take a day off, you've got to take a break, I

say I'm building something. Yeah. And it's important you don't. I mean important. It matters. It matters. I think it does, yeah. But I mean, this is like one of the many reasons why I really admire you. And I almost feel like, I don't know, I feel like we're kindred spirits in some ways because there's just so many ways that you've reinvented yourself and you've done so many new things, like, throughout your whole life. Like getting your PhD. Yes. Yeah. In your 60s.

Yes. That's incredible. Yeah, I think it's crazy. I don't, I don't understand it. Well, first of all, reinvention comes sort of comes with the territory because the economy changes and the world changes and you change. And so I mean, when I started working as a journalist, we were typing on like standard, you know, manual typewriters and you have to keep on reinventing yourself or you're just going to be passed by.

And because one of my because I have the values of achievement and scope, I didn't want that to happen to me. So I kept on. And also I just have a natural kind of personality. I'm an early adopter of technology. Like I was like one of the first people who bought a BlackBerry back when there were Blackberries. I was like, this is so cool. Like, you know, and I so I have that part of me and I think

there's weirdly a kind of fearlessness about how I approach the world. But I think it that is actually increased a lot since Jack died because when the worst thing in the world has happened to you, like what can scare you anymore? And one thing that really helped me is when I was fired in my 40s from the Harvard Business Review. And it was like a little bit of a, it felt like a public death. I'd never been fired from anything in my life.

Then I was fired and it was reported in the Wall Street Journal. And then I didn't die. And people kind of came around and said, yeah, everybody gets fired and like, you'll get over it. And then the two weeks later, Oprah's organization called me and said, how do you like to come work here? And I was like, oh, wait a minute, I'm going to dig that a lot. And you realize that you could just die 1000 times in your career and it's on you.

You can just be reborn. And just to sort of say, yeah, but you've got to have the the ability to say, yeah, got fired. I'm not going to try to. I didn't get laid off. I didn't like. And in fact, when I got fired, they said they were going to put out a press release that said that I resigned. And I said, don't do that. You're firing me. I want the truth. I'm going to tell the truth. And so should you.

And I mean, I, I hope if there's anything, you know, that I've given other people the curve, say, look, it didn't work out and I got fired and then I moved on. I love it when people are candid that way. So I, you know, some of my reinvention was quite forced because I had no other choice. But I could have just opted out and I just opted in. Yeah.

Awesome. Oh my God, you're so wise. I'm so. I'm just absorbing everything. Like you're, you're so like filling my cup. I'm so. I love being with you. I'm yeah, I'm so happy for your futures. And you were just. The fact that you're doing this is beautiful. It's fantastic. Thanks so much, Susie. And so for our audience listening, what is the best way they can connect or find your content, your book? Oh, holy.

All right. So I mean, there's Susie Welch all together is my Instagram. I'm on LinkedIn, you can and my podcast is called Becoming You. You can find it on all the platforms and the book is everywhere. Books are sold. And the values bridge is at the valuesbridge.com. Incredible. It's Susie with AZ. Yeah, Suzy. Amazing. Thank you so much. I love being here. Appreciate you. Ever come to New York? You've got to come be on my podcast. Yeah. We have so much fun. Absolutely. OK. I'm game.

I'm game. Yay.