Becoming You with Suzy Welch

The Three Things Working Against Your Friendships

Suzy Welch was standing in her kitchen when the phone rang. Her best friend's voice was different before she even said a word. "I can't be friends with you anymore," she said — and hung up. It was the last time they spoke for fifteen years.There's no word for that kind of loss. No apparatus, no ceremony, no bereavement leave, no language for losing a friend the way there is for a marriage or a family. This week on Becoming You, Suzy digs into why.She starts with the data on The Values Bridge value of Belonging — a value that lands dead center for most people, #8 out of 16, and is the value of friendship, community, and being part of the group. Only 1% of people have it as their #1 value. Suzy talks with one such person, Rachel Gillman Rischall of The Connection Code, about what it's like to live Belonging as a top value, runs down the three biggest eurekas she had preparing for this episode, and sits down with NYU Stern's friendship expert Julianna Pillemer to discuss the surprising science of friendship at work.Finally, Suzy reunites with Sue Jacobson, the friend from that phone call, to talk about what really happened, why it took fifteen years to find out, and what brought them back.Come along, my friends.As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge. You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the ⁠Becoming You newsletter⁠ for fresh new content in one tidy package.Want more Becoming You? Check out the ⁠Becoming You book⁠.You can follow and tag Suzy on:• Instagram: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• Linkedin: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• TikTok: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• YouTube: ⁠@suzywelch_⁠• X: ⁠@SuzyWelch⁠

The Four Things No One Tells You About Fame

This week on Becoming You, your host Suzy Welch takes on fame, or what the Becoming You methodology calls Luminance, one of the 16 values measured by The Values Bridge, Suzy's psychometric tool for figuring out what actually matters to you. And of all 16, this is the one people are least willing to own. Only 3% rank it in their top 5. Most people bury it near the very bottom. Suzy thinks that's not because so few of us feel it, it's because it's the one value you're not supposed to say out loud.Suzy opens with a story she's never quite gotten over: a college friend whose hunger for fame she once dismissed, judged, and didn't understand, and the friendship it cost her, for good, decades later. She goes back 3,000 years to Achilles, who's given a choice between a long forgotten life and a short one with undying glory, and picks glory, and nobody in the Iliad thinks he's a narcissist for it. Then she gets into the actual research on why people want to be known: for status, for a platform to do good, as the byproduct of doing great work, or simply so they're not forgotten.Plus: actress Paloma Garcia-Lee talks with real candor about what it's like to hold this value and live it out loud, and casting director Sophia Welch (and frequent guest, and Suzy’s daughter), who's spent 14 years in rooms full of people chasing the spotlight, rejoins to talk about what fame really rewards, and what it really costs.If you've ever wanted to be known, or caught yourself judging someone else for wanting it, this episode is for you.Follow Paloma Garcia-Lee here. As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge. You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the ⁠Becoming You newsletter⁠ for fresh new content in one tidy package.Want more Becoming You? Check out the ⁠Becoming You book⁠.You can follow and tag Suzy on:• Instagram: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• Linkedin: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• TikTok: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• YouTube: ⁠@suzywelch_⁠• X: ⁠@SuzyWelch⁠

The Three Things No One Tells You About Being the Boss of Your Own Life

Agency is the number two value in the Becoming You data set—the drive to be the author of your own life, no exceptions, no apologies. But according to Suzy, it's the Jekyll and Hyde of values: sometimes it's your best friend, helping you build the life you actually want. Other times it's the thing quietly running through the history of wars, divorces, and career fails, because your Agency is always bumping up against someone else's.In this deep dive episode, Suzy takes you 3,000 years back to the earliest recorded signs of Agency. She sits down with NYU Stern self-determination scholar Steve Blader to unpack why some people need to run their own show and others don't. And she talks to Pastor Jimmy Scroggins about the 18% of people for whom Agency is a low value—including what it actually means to hand your Agency over to a higher power, and why that's not the same thing as having none.Plus: entrepreneur and content creator Drew Henry joins to talk about how Agency shaped his career pivot from corporate marketing to working for himself—and the time it got him called into an HR meeting over an out-of-office request. (You'll want to hear the email he sent.)If you've ever felt like you had to be the one calling the shots, or wondered why you can't seem to let go of control, this episode is for you.As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge. You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the ⁠Becoming You newsletter⁠ for fresh new content in one tidy package.Want more Becoming You? Check out the ⁠Becoming You book⁠.You can follow and tag Suzy on:• Instagram: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• Linkedin: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• TikTok: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• YouTube: ⁠@suzywelch_⁠• X: ⁠@SuzyWelch

The Three Things No One Tells You About Happiness

This week on Becoming You, your host Suzy Welch tackles the value everyone assumes they already understand: happiness. Using data from the Values Bridge — the assessment that has now been taken by hundreds of thousands of people — Suzy reveals that Eudemonia, the value of personal happiness, self care, flourishing, and fun, is far from universal. It skews by gender, it drops off sharply with age, and it even shifts with income. Suzy traces the philosophical fault lines around happiness, from Aristotle's insistence that it's a whole life and not a good afternoon, to the Stoics' case for tranquility over feeling, to the Buddhist idea that the chase itself might be the trap. Along the way, she shares a deeply personal story about discovering Dostoevsky in tenth grade and dropping it on her family at Christmas dinner — with her sister Elin along to set the record straight. Whether Eudemonia sits at the top of your values list or, like Suzy's, near the bottom, this episode makes the case that knowing exactly where you stand on fun and self care is one of the most useful things you can know about yourself.As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge. You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the ⁠Becoming You newsletter⁠ for fresh new content in one tidy package.Want more Becoming You? Check out the ⁠Becoming You book⁠.You can follow and tag Suzy on:• Instagram: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• Linkedin: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• TikTok: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• YouTube: ⁠@suzywelch_⁠• X: ⁠@SuzyWelch⁠

Welcome to For the Love with Jen Hatmaker

Joy isn't the reward you earn after all the work is done. Joy is the work. That's what a new series on For the Love with Jen Hatmaker is all about, the Sacred Yes. It's choosing delight, rest, and pleasure on purpose because saying yes to yourself, that's the thing that finally lets you fill your table with everybody else. Come find your Sacred Yes with Jen. Follow and listen to For the Love with Jen Hatmaker wherever you get your podcasts.