The Zac Clark Show - Renowned NYU Professor Created a Test That Teaches You Who You Are | Suzy Welch on Becoming You

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

What if there was a test that could actually tell you who you are – or even better, who you’re meant to become?In this episode, Zac and Jay explore Becoming You: The Proven Method for Crafting Your Authentic Life and Career, the groundbreaking philosophy and curriculum developed by Suzy Welch – New York Times bestselling author, award-winning NYU professor, podcaster, innovator, and trusted mentor helping individuals and organizations pursue lives of meaning and flourishing.Suzy’s Becoming You course became NYU’s most popular business school class ever, sparking a worldwide movement among Gen Z and professionals alike to find what they crave most: purpose. After losing her husband, legendary GE CEO Jack Welch, Suzy rebuilt her life by creating a rigorous, research-backed framework that helps people uncover their deepest values and design a life aligned with them.At the center of that framework is The Values Bridge – a scientifically validated assessment that reveals your 16 core human values, measures your Authenticity Gap, and maps your Values DNA. It doesn’t just tell you who you are; it shows you where your life and values are in harmony – or in conflict – and what changes can move you toward a more authentic, fulfilling existence.Zac and Jay take the conversation beyond the classroom, reflecting on their own journeys of self-discovery, loss, and purpose – and how tools like The Values Bridge can illuminate the path forward for anyone trying to live a life that actually feels like theirs.Take Suzy Welch’s renowned values test – The Values Bridge – here: https://thevaluesbridge.com/Learn more about Suzy’s best-selling book, Becoming You: The Proven Method for Crafting Your Authentic Life and Career: https://www.suzywelch.com/books/becoming-you-the-proven-method-for-crafting-your-authentic-life-and-career/Connect with Zachttps://www.instagram.com/zwclark/https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-c-746b96254/https://www.tiktok.com/@zacwclarkhttps://www.strava.com/athletes/55697553https://twitter.com/zacwclarkIf you or anyone you know is struggling, please do not hesitate to contact Release Recovery:[phone]releaserecovery.com@releaserecovery

Okay, so we are back here at the Zach Clark show, and I am, it's always nice when you have an interaction with a guest before you actually sit in the chair with them. And Susie and I had dinner earlier this year. Susie Welch, I feel like I can introduce you without reading the thing, but I will do that anyway because it's important to acknowledge that you hold your PhD in business from university. University of Bristol, Harvard Business School. You're an award-winning professor of management practice at NYU Stern and director of the NYU Stern Initiative on purpose and flourishing. The thing I'll say about Susie is she's an expert in leadership, management, helping people become themselves. You know, the older you get, the less you know, that's sort of a problem. So, I mean, but I guess that leadership less than self-discovery, if I had to be an expert in anything.

leadership less than self-discovery more self-discovery i think more self-discovery i mean leadership i can talk to i teach it i can talk about it i teach it and so forth but i'm really more about career development life planning and which all begins with self-discovery yeah i mean the thing that i've been like so we do a lot of work on college campuses and the thing that i am saying to college students and high school students more and more is be curious about your future you have permission like giving them permission to actually not just do finance because daddy was in finance. Well, they're just scared, Shillis. Oh, pardon me. Can I swear? Yeah, swear, please. Coming right out of the gate. Say it all, yeah. No, I mean, I think that when we are

alone, when professors are alone, we look at each other and we say the youth are not okay. I mean, it's scary out there because even if daddy was in finance, you might not be able to because AI is coming for every, at least you think AI is coming for every job you ever thought you could get. Any entry-level job feels very fragile right now. So, What I say, when I talk to the youth, when I talk to people who are in college and even in high school and obviously graduate school, I say, you only know one thing about the future and that's going to be who you are because the economy is going to keep on change. We are in the era of constant pivot. And if you know who you are, it's going to make it easier to pivot because you have at least, you know, what your values are, you know, what your aptitudes are. Because how do you choose what industry to go in when every industry is up for grabs right now?

Do you think that's going to happen, though? Do you think that, you know, whatever the CEOs are saying, 30% of jobs are going to be taken away and AI is going to, do you think that will happen? Yes. Yeah. I mean, I wish I could say, I wish I could say no. I think it's scary enough as it is. I don't want to feed into it more than it is. But, I mean, how could it not change?

You know, work that was done by people can now be done by AI. There's going to be work because industries fall apart and rebuild. So there's going to be work. I don't know what the dislocation is going to be. This is what my colleagues in the economics department fight about is what is the dislocation. How many jobs are lost versus one? I don't know.

Is work going to be different? Absolutely. Do you feel that in your students? Do you feel that there's this angst about the future and how am I going to get a job? I mean, like, what do you think? Title Wave or tsunami? It's hard to decide which one of this.

Really? Yeah. Because because the number of jobs that are being, that people are recruiting for, that's decreasing as companies sit around saying, how many entry-level people do we need? Now, maybe they're not hiring more. That's what the jobs numbers would show you.

I mean, that's what's so interesting about for me, behavioral health care, because if I look at release recovery, we just crossed 100 employee mark, which is yay. Congratulations. And I would say, you know, 60 to 65 of those folks are people that got well, did some form of therapy, or were affected by a family member, or something in their life happened that threw them into this career.

Right. And even for me, I don't know that it was a personal choice. I mean, I was a sport management major. I went to York College of Pennsylvania. It was not a scintillating degree by any stretch of the imagination. I was a recruiter coming out of college because that was just the job I was able to get. And then my life blew up and my personal experience led me to this career, which makes me curious about you, Susie, because you are here.

Do you know how you got here? I do. I mean, thank God I do, right, because this is what I teach. But I am a very unlikely person to be talking to people about career discovery because I was a person who lived. Look, just to go up to 20,000 feet, there's really three ways to live, right? They call these the three Ds. The first D is default, where you're just fully reactive. Like life comes at you.

You have no theory of what you want to do or who you are. And you're just like our pinball machine. You just bounce around and the flippers. And I, like, guilty is charged. I did that for a lot of years and maybe even decades because I wasn't sure there were a lot of versions of Susie

there were a lot of things I didn't you know I wasn't sure did I want to be this did I want to be that then I had kids I'd four of them oops that sort of throws things up in the air and so forth and I was living by default from the outside it probably didn't look that way but it felt like that in the inside so then you know

you get tired of that that's exhausting and the second D then kind of begins to emerge and that's deliberation when you start to sprinkle some intentionality on how you go about things. You have kind of a vague theory, oh, wait, but I really want this, or I really value that, or I'm really good at this. And that's better. But the real thing that we all want, really, we all want to live by design, where we do say, this is who I am, this is my dream of a life. And there will be detours, and there will be valleys, and there

will be wrong turns, and there will be a lot of, because it happens. You know what I mean? Life happens. But if you can live by that third day of design, I think you have a better shot at having a meaningful and productive life. And I don't talk about happiness. I think the happiness industrial complex is a dangerous thing. I don't go there. But I'd like people to live more lives of flourishing. So in your case, it's 2001.

You have four kids. You are working as a report. You're right. I'm an editor at that point. I was the editor of the Harvard Business Review. We're working, running a business magazine. So you have a career. Oh, great career.

I mean, I had a spectacular career. Went to Harvard Business School. I went to work at Bain and Company. I did incredibly well there. I was recruited a way to run the Harvard Business Review, which is a bit of, I mean, not everyone reads it, but it's an extremely respected magazine for business leaders. And I was, I had been a senior editor,

and then I was promoted to editor-in-chief. And I had, I mean, from the outside, I had just gotten a divorce. I had married my high school sweetheart, which neither of us should have been married to each other. We're very dear friends, so I don't know, no shade on him. But we had a divorce. I had four kids under the age of like seven at that point.

And, I mean, it was inside an epic shit show. I mean, but on the outside, I'd look like that girl who had it all all at the same time. Because that's what society told you to be. I was successful. My kids were great. I mean, that's what it looked like at a beautiful home in the suburbs. And it looked great. I mean, I had gotten the divorce.

But everybody kind of thought, oh, they got married so young. And they, I mean, there was nobody who was like, oh, this was a terrible thing. People kind of understood. But we met when we were 14 and we really just grew part of people thought, oh, they got it. I mean, there's a part of me that gets jealous of that because when I look at the friends in my life, most of my closest friends are married to their high school or college sweethearts. And I feel like they had a lot of time to kind of get to know that person and hopefully make a sound decision. And I would like to say they're all still happily married, but who knows what's really going on at home?

To your point, prior to so the cliffhanger or the job. to is you end up interviewing Jack Welch, who's the CEO of GE Health Care, probably one more... No, no, GE, full GE, not GE health care. A whole ding-dain thing. Regardless. I misspoke. You corrected me. I always, you know, I always appreciate it.

There's only like a $4 billion for this. I would say, yes, he was not CEO, though. He just retired. He was retired when I met him. Oh, he was? Yeah. Prior to that interview is my question, not because it sounds like it was this immediate connection that was formed.

did you know that you were working towards your design phase of your life? Or did you know, like, what were you seeking at that moment? To stay alive. I mean, I had four little kids, and I was running a magazine where it's 65 people reporting to me. It was a hundred million dollar business. And to make it through the day was the big victory. I did not know anything except for that I lived another day. And I, look, I had a good job and I had a roof over my head, but it was a struggle.

I mean, divorce, even when you get divorced and it's not a bloodbath, it's very unpleasant. I mean, I was hurt and divorce is very embarrassing. People only knew us together. Again, we'd been together at that point a really long time. And so, I mean, I was, I wanted to be a great leader to my people. I want to be a good mother. I felt like I was barely holding it together with my fingernails. Then Jack retired and my boss said, why don't you go interview him?

And he didn't want to interview him. He was the biggest CEO in the world. and he said to our mutual friends, I don't want anything to do with the Harvard Business Review that's stupid scholarly magazine. And one of our mutual friends said, oh, come on, do an interview with Susie, you're going to love her.

And we laugh about that. We laughed about it until he died that hilarious line because, you know, I walked into the room and it was like, boom. Immediate. Immediate, yeah. Immediate, absolutely immediate. I actually literally staggered backwards.

I actually did. I actually fell backwards. Yeah. Was that the first time you felt that? Oh, my God. I mean, if you had told me at that point, I would never believed it. I didn't believe in love at first.

I was a, I am a realist. I'm like a totally unwoo-woo person. I would have told you, get out. That's just not how it. And I believe me, I was not holding love in high regard at that moment because I just kind of busted up marriage, you know? And so I was like, no one gets love. And I actually said to my children, maybe like two nights before I met Jack,

we're married to each other now. And that's how it felt. How old were they at the time? I think the oldest was seven or six. Seven. Wow, very young. So I'm going to try to ask this question. And I hope it comes off right.

or that I ask it in the right way. Prior to meeting Jack, you have a very, you talk about it. You have a very, very successful career. You are operating at a very high level. Naturally, when you start to date and then marry someone of Jack's stature, people are going to have opinions about you, maybe how you got to where you are, which you know are not true. And I'm just curious how much of that experience in meeting him

and doing life with him led to, becoming you like led to what you currently do today or maybe you'll say that it didn't have any effect i don't know well no one suspected that i got to where i was by anything i was like a very straightforward person i was very well educated and so i think that thank god there was no twitter after i met jack people had plenty of opinions about me getting with jack um but you know it's not an age gap he's 20 years older than i was i mean i think that i you know it didn't help me to marry jack i got fired i mean so it was like my career blew up because of it because I went to interview him and I came home and I said to the editor, the boss of me,

we have to pull that Jack Welch interview because I fell in love with that guy. And they fired me. And I don't think it would happen today. You know, I technically, Jack was separated from his wife and I was divorced. And so, but they said it didn't look good and maybe it didn't and I got fired. So it wasn't like it helped me very much. And so then I had to rebuild who I was. I mean, I hated being fired.

I hated losing my job. And there was a lot of publicity about it. I mean, a lot, but there was no social media. Thank God. If there had been social media, I don't know. If there had been social media also would have been able to defend myself. I would have been able to come out and say, this is a love story. I mean, when they fired me, they said, we're firing you for your fling with Jack Welch.

And I said, fling, we're going to get married and they laughed. I mean, the two bosses who were in the room like threw back their heads and laughed. And I was like, no, no, no, really. And they were like, oh, poor you, Susie. So, you know, going back to what Zach saying about becoming you, you know, default, deliberate design, are you, where does that start? Like when you, where does this like start to go from below the consciousness to like now starting to actually manifest this and label it? That's a great question. It starts with knowing your values. I mean, I think my premise with this methodology that I teach and I've talked to like tens of thousands of people now. is that you can start to get to design when you know three things about yourself.

The first is your values, which no one knows. No one knows their values. No one even knows what a value is. I have research to prove this. People think values are virtues. People think values are identity. They think their personality, but there's not. There's 16 human values,

and everybody has some level of each one of them. And now we know what Zaks are, too. So this is exciting because you read the book and you took the test and so forth. So the first thing is you've got to know your values. That's number one. Number two is you've got to know your apt. I'm going to be called out.

Go ahead. I have your values. Okay, good. We're going to get into it. I'm going to memorize them, but I know them. You've got to know what your aptitudes are. Attitudes are not your skills. They're not your expertise.

They're what you're genuinely good at because you were pre-wired in the womb to have certain cognitive aptitudes. You're better at some things than others. Either you're a generalist or a specialist. Either you're a brainstormer or you're an idea processor. I mean, there's eight big cognitive aptitudes. You've got to know what those are for you. Easy to find out.

Just got to take a test. easy to find out. And you've got to know what your personality is. Oh, you think you know your personality. Do you? No, you do not. You don't. Your personality is not what you say about yourself. Your personality is how the world experiences you. A lot of people spend their whole lives trying to figure that out. How do you figure that out though? Because if I go around and poll people, hey, how do I present in the world? They're probably not going to, I mean, you'll give me the real answer, but. Yeah. I mean, I think if you are self-aware person and you surround yourself with good friends who speak the truth too, you can get it. I mean, my students

have to test for it because sometimes they don't want to hear. I mean, sometimes what happens is when people tell us how they're experiencing us, we separate from them. I mean, I think some of the people who you work with has spent a long time running away from what loved ones are saying about them when they're not well, when they're using, right? They don't listen to people saying this version of you is very hurtful. So there's a bunch of different ways to find out what you're apt to start.

And the final thing is you've got to find out what authentically interests you, what calls you emotionally and intellectually that also pays you, according to what your value is around affluence. Once you have those three data sets, then you can live by design as soon as you got that. So, I mean, wow, I mean, unbelievable. I can't wait to hear your test. But for you personally, like when are you starting to, on your journey,

you know, identify this, you know, look back and think, this is what I've been thinking about all along because I don't feel like I'm living an authentic life. I feel stuck or whatever. Like, how did you start to formulate this? So it started after I met, when I met Jack, he started talking to me a lot about values, and he was big on values. And I said to him, I've heard that word so many times, what does it actually mean? And I started to try to understand what it meant and what mine were.

Well, right in this period, after I left HBR and I was fired, I went to go work for Oprah. It was wonderful. I thought I was never going to work again. But then about a week later, the Oprah organization reached out to me to become a columnist at, oh, the Oprah Macra. magazine, and I started to write about work-life balance and about work, and basically I was the workplace columnist. And in that period, I was writing a lot about the different challenges that came up with being a working mother, basically. And I was using a tool that I had invented back in like 1995 called 10-10-10, which was a decision-making methodology, which I just used,

and I kind of shared it with all my friends and everyone loved it, and it's a way to make your decisions more values-based. And one day I was talking to Gail King and pitching my stories for the next month to her. And I told her about 10, 10, 10, 10. And she said, you've got to write about that right away. 10 minutes, 10 months, 10 years.

Right. And it's a way to make your, you sort out your options of any decision. You've got to make a decision. Here are all my options. What are the consequences to me in the immediate future? I love it.

10 minutes. The foreseeable future, that's 10 months. And then the life I want to create, that's 10 years. But it doesn't work unless you know your values, because then you apply your values is the screen. And I had been using that to sort of get my life together slowly but surely.

And once I had a happy marriage, a lot of this was easier because a lot of my living by default was me just trying to keep a sinking ship afloat. How much of, just to, like how much of the partner is the key to, how important is the partner, the husband, the wife, the spouse? I mean, it depends on how much you value belovedness. belovedness is the value of romantic love. I guess when Jack was living, I must have had a very high value of it. I think when I was young, I had a very high value of it.

I come from a family where, you know, I just believed that you have your person. And I think that, I mean, my, I recently, I just retook the values bridge to, you know, and I'm a widow, and my belovedness is dead last because it's not a value of mine anymore. It's no longer important. I had my marriage. you and that's how you feel yeah i mean i mean i i yeah i mean that's i i feel like i'm it's not driving my life right now to find a partner i mean i had a great marriage if i meet somebody to go out for a glass of wine with okay great fine but i mean i it's not driving my life as it

might be for other people um because they want to do life with somebody belovedness meaning that you're looking for a partner that you share values with that you well belovedness is a value so there's three different kinds of love that are captured in my values inventory, so I have a values inventory. I invented, it's called the Welch Bristol Values Inventory. There's several different values inventories, meaning a list of values that people can have. There's kind of one that's quite famous in academia called the Schwartz Values Inventory. It has 19 values. Mine has 16. And every single, when you say what's a value, well, it's an organizing principle for your life. It's what you would prioritize. We can't live them all equally all at the same time.

We can try, but we can't. And so belovedness is the value that captures romantic love. And it means either you want to have a partner or you make a high priority of the partner that you are already with. It's how much romantic love matters as an organizing principle of your life. And guess what? Some people have it really high. It's number one.

And some people have it very low. And the biggest problem is when those two people get together. I mean, I think you've got to have the value of belovedness. Is that where you hear the classic example of maybe like, you know, the guy who is just like wanting to go play golf or view with his friends or like have this whole other life and the wife is like but what about us look you know it's sort of like you know some people are early birds like I wake up at 445 every day I'm just a total early bird right and then dogs you're out with the dogs and right yeah the dogs but also even if it wasn't the dogs I'd get up

early it's why I am it's how I'm wired and I'm whatever and then there's some people who are night owls I am right okay well these people always often get married to each other jack was a total night owl I was an earlier we worked it out. It was fine. And I think this is a problem with belovedness is if you have one person in the relationship who's like the relationship is the central defining organizing principle. It's their value. And then they're with a person who's like, yeah, I love you, but like I got to have a life outside of you. And they prioritize what we would call belonging, which would be going to play golf with your friends or community or whatever. Or they value, I mean, it could be anything. It could value eutemonia, which is just fun. Okay. And they're

married to each other or they're in relationship with each other, feelings get really hurt. You can't convince somebody to have belovedness as a higher value, so. How many people do you think, I mean, you can't answer this, but I'm just curious, like a percentage of people. Maybe she can. I certainly can. Maybe you can. Maybe you can. I can. Okay, great. The percentage of people who are in a, you know, the wrong marriage. Oh, in the wrong marriage. I can tell you how many people have high belovedness versus low belovedness. And so I think high belovedness is like, it's like, people who have it is one of their top five values. It's in the 40s.

And people who have it as one of their bottom five eyes is in the 30s. And so woe to the people who like those people getting into the one relationship with each other. It takes a lot of forgiveness or understanding and mutual respect to say, I really value the relationship and you don't. That's cool. I mean, that just does not happen that often, okay? I think if you've got high belovedness, find somebody with high belovedness. And if you got low, then, you know, find somebody with low belovedness. And as you get older in life and maybe this is a.

selfish question for me because I'm 41 but like as you get older in life how I mean like some of this to me sounds like just maturity or experience or changing over time and values don't really change that they don't your values are pretty cooked by 25 I think a seismic event would change have a value change now we have incredible data so like me getting sober at 27 I mean like leading up to 27 I think you at a seismic event yeah okay so I would say there's two I'm sorry I'm going to nerd out you briefly. Let's do me. I mean, I'm ready. But let me talk to you, but first, to give you some context, there's two different, I'm in the field of values. And so there's two different things about values. There's values formation, which is how you came to your values. And you probably

hear about that a lot in your work. Like when somebody is in the journey to getting sober, they'll say, I drank because X happened to me, okay? And they'll be talking about what happened in their childhood and what happened in their life that led them to drink or use drugs. But the world that I'm in about planning your life and living by design is values expression. All I really care about is you know what your values are and that you're living them authentically, right? And so there's a lot of social science that shows us of people's aptitudes, their cognitive wiring and their personalities are pretty firmly set by age 15. The body of work on this is very clear, 15 years old. But there's no body of work on when values are set. But my empirical research, which would be

probably 50,000 data points at this point or probably more, would suggest that by age 25, your values are, the rank order of your values is pretty set unless there's a seismic event. And I would include getting sober in that. I would include the loss of a spouse in that. I would include a child maybe going off the rails in that. I mean, a very seismic event. But generally, I think your values are pretty set. What changes is how much you're living by them.

So I want to have you dissect me. Yes, I want to dissect you. Before we do that, the thing that's coming up for me, Susie, is there are like in the eight, and you talked about social media and you have your friends here who work with you that are going to try and make us all look good and sound good and we're going to roll us out into the world. And I agree with you that like if this, you know, marriage to Jack was happening during the social media era, you would have had a chance to defend yourself. I also think that it gives a microphone to people

that maybe shouldn't have a microphone. So all of your work is researched and it's years and years and years of data points as you just spoke to. How do you feel, like what happens to you when you see these talking heads kind of spewing? Why is yours the best? I try to breathe through it.

I mean, I think that, look, I think that it's good there's a lot of voices because people need to hear different perspectives and then make up their mind. I mean, I like mine because it's scientifically validated. It's research-based. Everything has been pressure test invalidated over and over again. I mean, we have very good efficacy research that shows that people use my methodology, something like 91% report increases in, we don't use the word happiness again, but in alignment and clarity and purpose. And that's about three times the average of other tests and methodologies. So we feel really good about that. But people have to make choices about what they want to do. I would say that my methodology, kind of like yours,

is not a quick fix. I mean, I have no hacks. There's no silver bullet. It's work. You've got to find out what your values are. Sometimes, look, the reason why my class, the nickname for my class at NYU is the class where everyone cries. There's a reason for that. Because when you find out what you, I mean, I've sat in classrooms. Now, remember, they can't see each other because they're all facing me in the, in the, your hall, but I'm looking up there and like half the class is crying because they are discovering their values as we do the exercises. It's great except for like you feel like, you know, they leave the room and you want to stay with them. Well, it's a lot of responsibility for you and I relate to that. So if I was going to say, I want to follow Susie, right? Like I want to do this. The first step

is to take the value. What is the first step? I think there's a lot of ways to hear what I'm saying. I have a book. It's called Becoming You can get that. There it is. So you can read the book. You can read the book. That's one thing you can do. I have workshops in New York all the time, and you can sign up for one of those workshops. I'm doing a free webinar today, as a matter of fact, for moms, because being a mom can be, being a parent can be incredibly complicated. My website is suzy welch.com. They can go there. I've got social media. Instagram is my main platform. But the values bridge is a really good place to start. This is a test which I created at the Becoming U Labs based on all of my research. It takes about 22 minutes to take, 25 minutes, it depends, and it will give you

your values in rank order from 1 to 16. There's a free version. You'll find out your top four or five values. So if that's all you want to know, do that. Otherwise, it cost you 30 bucks. I wish it could be free, but engineers cost money. So that's part of knowing your values, right? I mean, I have to look. This test was, it was quite complicated to create. so when you're looking because it sounds like that meeting jack sort of stirred this and all this information and where it kind of came out of you and you formalized it uh well i was working on i mean i think the funny turn of events was that had i not gotten fired for remaring jack i probably would have never ended up working for Oprah and it was at Oprah that i wrote 10 10 10 that book that

book's done very well it's more than a million copies about decision making but the problem was like, you know, there's the 10-10-10 methodology. And what it says is you've got to know your values to do this methodology. So my publisher came back to me, she said, how do we help people find out their values? And that was really, you know, that was 15 years ago. And then I said, I got to work on that. And I really started doing the research. I started doing the work. I started to come up with tests and exercises. And then when I started teaching at NYU ultimately, and my students, I had to help them go through this process to learn their values. a lot of different. I use seven different exercises. And I remember thinking it's just not

databaseed enough. It's still too loosey-goosey. Everybody comes up saying the same thing at the end that they won't rank order them. I can't force them. And so I used to stand up in front of the class with an abacus moving beads around saying, look, this is how it works. And I was explaining the development of the values bridge in my head. And then I would look out at my classroom with holding the abacus saying, does anybody know how to code? And it was pathetic until my PhD thesis is advisor finally said to me, you're going to make this tool, just commit. You want to make the tool, you know what the tool is, you've got the data, you know, and he was saying this in a very plummy British accent, and so it sounded very pleasant, but he was basically saying, shut the F up and just

do the work. And so I knew I couldn't do it alone. Why? Because I am not a, I'm not a psychometrition. I had to bring psychometricians around me. I had to get developers and so forth, and I committed and made the test and learned a lot. And guess what? I thought one of the reasons I couldn't do it was because I didn't know how to write an algorithm, but guess what? I learned. I mean, I had to learn because I remember one of the engineers saying to me, at the end of the day, you have to write that, even if you write down what the algorithm should be. And so I will tell you with the ripe old age of 60, I wrote my first algorithm,

I've written a few since then, so. So this test has been around for? If 51,000 people have taken it since May, I will tell you that. We started beta testing it two years ago. Since May. But since May, then we, yeah, we just released it to the public widely. but we were testing it for two years before. We wanted it to be perfect when I came out.

And so it was widely released to the public. I mean, my students have been using it since becoming you, but it's been released to the public starting in May of this year. Why do you think that discovering your values or understanding your values is such a major discovery for people? Because if you don't know your values, you're just going to live by default. You're just going to do whatever kind of is right in the moment

and you don't ever step back and say, wait, wait, that's not truly my priority. I'm just doing that not to piss so and so off. Or I'm doing that to avoid this immediate pain. I mean, I think that to make reasoned, consistent, transparent decisions, we have to have some kind of governor in our brain. And the governor is our values. And not all values can, look, values come into conflict.

You can't value, okay, people try, being wildly wealthy and having a load of fun at the same time. Okay, that's the value of fun and self-care and pleasure and recreation and just feels good to me. That's eudamonia, okay? And almost 70% of Gen Z has that as their number one value. And there's a lot of really interesting sociological reasons for that. But that's the truth. Almost 70% has that as their number one value. Unimonia.

Just want to have fun, pleasure. pleasure yeah or self-care which is sometimes very necessary i have no shade on it it's not my top value but i get it everybody has a right to their values but they also has as have as number two affluence and then they come up to me and they were like but i want to be really rich is this going to be hard so how is that steering career choices that they got to make a choice or they got to understand that if they want to keep eudamonia is their number one value something's got to give you can't be mad at the system those values like you don't you your time is a is a is a a you're a is a finite resource.

And if you want to spend your time and energy on self-care and personal flourishing, then this is going to diminish the amount of time that you go work at Goldman Sachs and bust your end for a client or whatever it is that you choose to do to make all that money. And I wish it wasn't so. I wish it wasn't so, but it is.

So you're at NYU and a lot of these, I mean, look, college campuses are filled with people from all walks of life. I understand that. The profile that I'm thinking of is, kind of the guy or girl who has a father figure or a mother figure that is very successful working on Wall Street, working in finance, and because of that, they've been given this beautiful life. They're at a really good college. But internally, they know that that is just

not the path that they want to take. Is that, is the value of affluence so high because of what their parents have programmed into them or the way that they've lived? So a couple of thoughts. Number one is that's not the profile of my typical student, NYU. You've got a ton of wonderful immigrant students, first generation. So the number of kids who were born with spoons and forks and silver orifices, wait, just to put this another way, born with silver spoon in their mouth, okay? It's a percentage. It's very, very small.

Yes, yes, yes. Okay, it's very, very small. I think that the reason why you see that conflict is human nature. You know, we want to feel good and we want to be rich and we, and we got to, and then we get mad when we don't have both. But the beautiful thing is having the language around saying, look, I've got two values that are in conflict, and something's got to give, and I may have to. postpone or understand that I'm not going to completely fulfill one of those values to achieve

the other. But you have to have that conversation with yourself and the people around you. When you really, really run into trouble is when you try to achieve them both at the same time and you keep on hitting a brick wall because it's very, very hard, unless you're incredibly good. Like if you are a brilliant, genius, you know, most efficient person in the world, highly, highly competent, maybe you can pull that off, but otherwise that's hard. But do you think that has, because of course, everyone wants to be happy, they want to be, they want to have fun, they want to be rich. No, no, no, that's not true. But of course, because a lot, no, no, no, no, no, not everyone wants to be rich.

You can't believe the numbers on affluence. It's actually kind of low. But the second one for your students, though. Well, I mean, I'm broadly generalizing. I mean, it's in their top five. Okay. Okay. In a top five.

Not uncommon for people, you know, who are younger, but I would say that affluence, even if you are rich and born rich and have parents who are rich, you can still design. or affluence is a value. Either you want to keep the money you got, but it's about lifestyle. And you're not, and you asked about whether they want to be rich because their parents tell them to be rich. And the test is very, very good.

It's separating you from what you're being told to value. The test is designed to find your true values and separate you from identity stuff and the voices in your head. And I think it actually does that. I mean, I always used, like I liked baseball. I did not love it. My dad loved that I played baseball.

So he was going to do everything he could to make sure that I played baseball as long as possible, which I did through college. And I remember having a little feeling of like, do I really, am I doing this for myself? Am I doing it for him? I'm doing it because I know that if I do this, I'm going to receive his love and a more. Right. Yeah. I call these, I call this the four horsemen of values destruction. And one of them is expectations, wanting to fill the expectations of the voices around you. They're saying to you, this should be your value. I mean, when I teach the four horsemen and what they are that come and steal your values from you, that's tough stuff.

What are they? Expectations is number, is one of them. It's, they all start with E. Expectations, which is sometimes your own expectations of yourself. I had a student who really wanted to be a Roomba teacher. And she said, I can't do that. I've got an MBA. That was her own issue.

Okay. The other is expedience. It's just easy. Look, you have to fight for your values, you know? Like that old Beastie Boy signs, you've got to fight for your right. Great song. a great song but you got to fight for your right to live your values and it you know like you can just really value things but knowing and achieving them you got to do something really hard and so you just take

the easier route expedience um the other is um economic security we just you know we're what we're you know behavior like an economist would tell you that we will just we will choose the thing that gives us more money whether we care about money or not so sometimes you just take the job that you just have this big uh-oh about because of the money and then like 20 years later you're like but the money didn't actually matter to me. This is why we test for affluence because why wait 20 years to find that out? And the final one, which is just everywhere, is events.

You know, life happens. You have a kid or a kid gets off the rails or you go through a divorce or you get fired and you are pushed away from your values which you then have to fight to get back to. I just remember, I mean, and I started to dig into some of your stuff and you talk about leadership

and I always assumed that everyone wanted to be a leader. I always just assumed everyone wants to be out in front, everyone wants to be the coach, the captain, because that was my experience in life. I wanted those things for myself, and I've built a life that I think... Everyone is told they should be a leader. I mean, imagine having a room full of MBAs, and they are all like being, hey, they've all been told, and they've drunk the Kool-Aid, but then I will retest for this, and with a tool called Career Traits Compass, which tells you where you are on the individual contributor to leadership

continuum. And when students get a lower score on this, which shows that they should be an individual contributor, that that's what their competencies are, that's what their aptitudes are, a lot of them say, I've known this my whole life, thank God, I just can't stand this pressure on me to be a leader. I don't want to be a leader. The first time it ever dawned on me, is I had a, my oldest son was a very dutiful child and was the captain of all the teams, and we say, go out there and be a leader, Roscoe, because that's how you're going to get to college, and Roscoe did everything, and everything led right up to him. He went to a great college, and even, you know, And then, you know, of course, when I wasn't there to ride hurt on him, he became his true self.

So then my second son came along and I said, okay, we know how we did this with Roscoe. Let's just repeat it with you. You got to be the captain of the swim team. You got to do this. You got to do that. And I remember him like, I love him so much. And this was the first moment where he asserted his individualality. And he said to me, I don't want to be the captain of the swim team.

And I was like, what? Someone doesn't, but out of the mouths of babes. And it was the beginning of me understanding that not everyone has main character energy and wants to. they it's you know people don't people are some people just don't want to be leaders but they're told they should be but i think the three of us sitting here fundamentally have a certain level of open-mindedness or willingness to see that you had an open-mindedness to see that oh your son maybe doesn't yeah yeah and then you use that to form some of your thoughts and opinions and i think it was already percolating when i he said to me i was editor of hvr when he said it to me and

i'd already i think when he said it i was like oh it was a moment it came together the world just like shut off yeah i know yeah because like this is this seems like a very flowing conversation, but there are there are moms out there that would, there's someone to say that, I hear you, but like you're going to be the captain of this, of this film team. Yeah, like they would force this. They would. And the kid will eventually become himself because

the arc of life bends towards authenticity. You know, you, uh, you will eventually become your authentic self. Oh, but it could take forever. 80 years. It could be the day before you die. I mean, you, but it shouldn't. I mean, that's, I mean, I created becoming you because I think it's better to be the author

of your life than the editor. You will eventually be your authentic self, almost no one in their old age. I mean, eventually, it's just too hard to hold your breath. Do you have people that you meet that say they're living their authentic self and then you're like, well, but true, rare. Rare. Rarely, rare, yeah. But I do. I mean, I am. I mean, I think that I meet people like me, but it's, and I'm, I'm, I mean, obviously that's my friend group, but I gravitate towards like that, people like that. I mean, I think I'm, my kids, I do because, you know, raised by me and Jack where we really stressed this and we actually wanted to know who they were. I remember one time I was pregnant with one of my kids and I came

in to drop my other two children at the time off for daycare and the teacher said to me, oh, it's any day now. And I said, yes, I just can't wait to meet this baby. I just can't wait to know who he or she is. I'd never found out the gender. So I said, I can't wait to find out who they are. And she said, that's so unusual about you. And I was like, what? And she's, I said, what's unusual? And she said, well, usually the parents are wanting to tell the kids who they are, not wanting to find out for the kids to tell them who they are. And I was like, oh, well, that's it. I mean, I didn't say it out loud, but that's kind of screwed up.

The kid is the kid. That's such a powerful statement that everyone needs to hear. Let the kids tell you who they are rather than. Save you so much misery. Save you so much misery. I'm planning my daughter's wedding with her. And every time they ask me. Right now you are?

I know I'm so excited. And I love my new son-in-law so much. And I love their love. And every time they ask me for my opinion about something, I say, this has to be your wedding and this has to be your wedding and just reminding them again and again it has to be their wedding but what's the line because i'm thinking about this as a parent i have two young kids a seven-year-old and a four-year-old and my four-year-old is uh he's he's a beautiful kid he's incredibly sensitive but and incredibly stubborn and willful and defiant and you know so getting him to do something he doesn't want to do is nearly impossible so i just kind of

okay well i'm about to make all your listeners hate me right now go oh please okay I'm not a fan of this gentle parenting stuff okay I mean I'm Sicilian and I there was no name for it then but I practiced Sicilian parenting I mean your children you have to let them know who you know let them be your kids probably any gram type four individualist and so forth

I mean I just you you got to find out who they are that doesn't mean you let them have bad character and so your job is to I had one job as a parent and one job only which was to put good character into my children And so I used to say to my kids, I have one desire, which is that if when you are 18 years old and you're driving down the highway and you see a woman with a broken down car and she's holding a baby on her hip and there's smoke coming out of the front of car, you are the person who pulls over to help her. That's all I care about. And that's how I raise them with that. And like, I remember mother saying to me, you must be kidding.

I'd be like, no, I want them to be the person who pulls over for the person whose car is smoking. And I think I'm four for four on that. Are they perfect? No. Do they piss me off sometimes? Of course they do. but I but they have character and so when your kid is willful and stubborn uh you know I would say that's not okay I mean I'm sure he's a wonderful kid but you got to raise them so that

they're not little jerks and assholes I mean that is a job and this gentle parenting is like we you're talking to a bear cub you're talking to a you're talking to a like an unformed little human there's certain behaviors that are not okay please is that like the baby voice or like I mean, I had a friend come over the other day. She said, her kid wears his special shirt, which is a gigantic t-shirt, and that's all he'll wear. He will only wear this gigantic t-shirt. And I said, wait a minute, like, he goes to school in the gigantic t-shirt. And the teacher actually said her, it's really smelling.

He needs to wear something different. And she said, well, we can't get it off of him to wash it. And I was like, I so wish that parents today had the gift of Sicilian parenting. I'm with you. I'm with you. It's hard. And we are in a gentle parenting, you know, culture where don't tell them to do anything and let, because it kind of goes against, you know, it's let the kid tell you, you know, in a certain

structure, but like, you're still the parent and like, you got to go do what you need to fucking do. That's right. You're going to school. That's right. I mean, they have to understand how the world works. This doesn't mean that you don't know who they are and that you don't know what their values are and what they're, what they're good at and what interests them.

That's all good stuff. But you have to behave. But should you force interest on them? Because that goes to like the baseball thing where it's like, You're an athlete. You're fast. You're going to play baseball. The way I did it is you had to try everything.

Would I ever, in a million, billion, trillion years, choose that my son would be interested in wrestling? Oh, my God, no. He came to me in sixth grade. He said, Mom, the wrestling coach, he was a big kid. The wrestling coach came to get me. I was like, do you know God? No.

No. And he said, I'm going to try it out. And I was like, of all the sports, okay? And he went on to be a fantastic, great wrestler. He loved it. his signature move was to he was a heavyweight wrestler was to lift somebody up and throw them on the ground but I went to more meets where it looked as if my son was choking to death finally jacks basically said you can't come to these anymore I'd be hiding under the bench it's like but he loved it and I had to let him do it

do I wish he'd played tennis in tennis whites yes I do it did not happen for me I used to expose them to everything like I remember taking origami with that kid he had a lot of anxiety and and I didn't know what to do about it so my intuition was like he needs to do something with his hands and he and I took origami together like three times a week at this like little local rec center he still does origami to this day yes to calm himself down so a wrestler doing origami yes he does a lot about the things too I mean he's a very multifaceted kid but he's that he's got two kids also and I'm watching with great interest the gentle parenting yeah I don't I mean look I I took singing lessons a year ago great interest yes I took singing lessons a year ago because I wanted to learn to

I can't sing, but like. Well, how are you doing with it? I, it was, I can't sing. Okay, well, let's, the voice coach at the end of the year said, Zach, you can't. Okay, see, this is an aptitude thing. I think you explore a lot of things. At a certain point, you just can't do some stuff. Like I, my whole family does pottery.

My daughter, it's a professional potter. My mom is a potter. And I don't go near the wheel, okay? I don't belong on the wheel. I just hand-build, and everything I build is childish and ugly, but it's, it's, it makes me happy. so Zach has many times I I don't know if is performing an aptitude or or yeah yeah because you know you've mentioned many times uh I mean I think you do perform you know when you're speaking you know you're you're a great public speaker uh you've mentioned the singing acting like I think

that's always been something I enjoy it with the athlete with being an athlete as well that that feeling of it um so I think I think that's untow I've never be like you know being excited in high school if I had a good game seeing what the papers were going to write the next That's luminance. That's a value. Caring what the paper say is a value. And we call that luminance. It's about how much you want to be seen. But is that connected?

Because I feel like a lot of performers are connected to that. Yes. The performers who have taken the values bridge often pop at luminance number one or two. So I took the test. Yes. Do you have my results or do you know? I have them on my phone. Hold on a second.

The values. So it was, I will say this for people listening, do it. It's affordable. I hope for most. and I learned a lot about myself. Yeah. And I learned a lot about you. Is it lie proof?

Yeah, it's pretty good. The efficacy of it is very high. I mean, compared to other tests, I mean, I think that it's very hard to outsmart this test. And we are, yeah, it is pretty live proof. Like, how would you compare this to this? I mean, I think a lot of people know what the enneagram is. Like, how would you compare this?

I love the anyagram. My students use the enneagram. The enigram does not test your values. It tests your personality. You know, I love it. My students take it's part of it. our mosaic of the tiles that we are putting together of your life and who you are. But the enneagram, there's some, we often see people's values that track with their aneogram,

but aneogram is a personality type indicator, and we do values. So I'm looking at your values right now. I don't know what you learned. I mean, I was encouraged by my results. I feel like, go ahead. I love your top two values for the work you're doing. I'll tell you, you're in very aligned work. So your top value is the value of radius.

And that is a value that it reflects how much you want to change the world. And when you have that as a top value, there is something in you to change something systemic in the world. I mean, this is often social justice warriors present with radius at number one. And this is somebody who really feels like there's something broken in the world that could be fixed systemically. I think this fits exactly with the work that you're doing. Interestingly, and these don't always pair, but they do with you. Your second value is what we call non-cibi. this is a very intimate desire to help people.

So sometimes people want to change the world, but if somebody has a flat tire, they have no interest in helping them change their flat tire. You've got both of these together. And non-Sibbi is the desire to help somebody in the details. It's very personal. It's an individual. If somebody came to you, if you pass somebody in the street

and they were looking really, really down and you saw them crying, you might stop and actually say, hey, is everything okay? I mean, you might actually stop and you want to help people in the particulars in the deal. So you've got these two things going together, they and I think in your case they ladder up okay now interestingly coming in at number three is eudamonia which is this uh self-care and I think for you though when there's somebody who is in recovery this self-care is not so much optional as it is um a survival kind of thing that you have

to take care of yourself because okay that you have to and I would say that if I had to guess after Jack died, I would think that eudamonia, which is almost dead last for me, it's actually right above belovedness and down at the bottom. I'm not a big person around fun or recreation. I think I just am not. I'm such a bore. I think work is my fun. I know work is my fun. I mean, I love working. So it's my joy. So I would say that I think in that period, in the sort of six months after my husband died, if I had to guess that eutomone came right up to like number three, I was taking care of myself because I was so close to the edge. I just was on teetering on such kind of like there's a moment with grief where you go into the abyss

and I didn't want to go there because I was taking care of my kids and I was running a company at the time. And I just so I just was right before COVID, right? It was during COVID. Yeah, it was a double whammy. He died March 1st and COVID sort of came March 16th. Right. Yeah. Okay.

So then here we have place. This is really interesting. So place is a value that represents how much one place matters to you. And if you have low place, a place is a very low value for your means, come out, you could live anywhere. Or, you know, you're not really attached to someplace. Yeah, I'll live in New York and I'll live in Boston or all, you know. And so what I would need to know, I don't have all of your results here is sort of what your

variance is on this, but this would suggest that where you live matters to you a huge amount. It matters to me in the sense that I want to, like my parents are very important. So I let my, so the Northeast. Like when I go west or I get really out of whack because I'm not on the same time. So oriented, right? Yeah, yeah, me too. It's like I also, I just like it. I mean, I just like it.

Yeah, right. I think that you know it and you wouldn't want to move from here. Somebody said, look, you got to do what you're doing, but you've got to move to Austin. You would heavily resist, right? You know, just another city. You've got to go live there. It's not New England. I don't know there's a world where I live anywhere outside of the Northeast.

Yeah. And like Jersey, New York specifically. Yeah, that's showing up for having this in one of your core values. your other you have two core values and then we'll look down at your lower values which are linked one is work centrism which is that you love to work and that work is a very high priority to you and then you right after that you've got achievement um and achievement is the desire to have seen success success that other people can see it's okay for me it's like my third value achievement is yeah that makes you feel better about that and i mean i know i think there's look

there's a little stink off of it right oh you just but i don't know i radius is also very high value for me and I think you know I want to there's things I want to change about this world you know and there's just a lot of hurt that I would like to address I think achievement's important to me my relationships too like I want the people in my life to acknowledge like just like I want to acknowledge their wins I want people to acknowledge my wins right are you in any gram type three I think so I think that sounds right so interestingly let's just look at your bottom values dead last for you is affluence it's money so you don't care about it I mean I think nobody look nobody wants to be I love to be poor no one goes there so like the the that the that

The test assumes that everybody wants to get by, but this is, it's about the ranking and it's about the gap, okay? So it's about the test measures how much you have this value, how much you have it, and how much you wish you had it. And it gives you on every single value, the gap, okay? And so for you- I never think about money. Right, okay.

Well, this would- There's not a day goes by where I've never- Yep, it shows up as very low, I mean, obviously your lowest value is affluence. Another low value for you is beholderism. which is how things look, including yourself. And so people with high beholdersism, a lot of times they're influencers or their architects or their artists. I have high beholdersism.

I really care how my houses look. Now, look, it's oftentimes a proxy for harmony, and I love things to be harmonious. I'm very low agency, meaning I just don't want to get my way all the time. I like things to be peaceful. So you have low beholderism. And I want to just say also quite low for you

is family centristism. So kind of this, and it doesn't mean you don't love your family. love your family with you could give them both your kidneys i always say to my kids i love you so much i'd give you not just one of my kidneys but both okay i you could love your family desperately it's how you want to organize your days and your time and your priorities and so when you're deciding what you're going to do tomorrow you're not sitting there saying i wonder how my parents would feel about this i mean you're just not it's not the organizing principle of your life not about

love so but it's about how much family drives your schedule interesting what are your thoughts i think that um You're a thresholder, which means you're living pretty closely to your values. I mean, it's, you're 19, you're 20, I think, or something like that. That's pretty good. There's some values that can be you could lean more heavily into. I think with radius, people who have radius as a top value almost never, you'd have to be Malala to think you're actually like living it fully, you know?

Or, you know, it's a hard value. If you want to change the world, the world just constantly needs changing. You're never going to. So I'm going to guess that radius is where you have the best. biggest gap, but I think you're living pretty closely to your values. So, well done. Thank you. I appreciate that. There's always work to be done. I mean, I, you know, I feel like that whole, I believe so much in people that, that I think at times it allows me to get hurt. Yes. It's okay. It's not a values thing. That's a personality thing, I would

say, and values are not personality. I will say one thing about your values. They're aligned, which is really great. I mean, I think it shows the work you've done on yourself. And you have radius and non-cibi aligned, work-centricism and achievement aligned. And so when you take affluence out of the mix, you have a lot less values conflicts. When affluence causes a lot of conflicts, you can really value, for instance, family centristism, number one. I get plenty of the people who come to my workshops and so forth have family centristism, number one. today I'm doing a large workshop with moms becoming you has got a lot of applicability in the life of mothers who are juggling a lot of values at the same time and trying to understand how to do that and what happens is you may have family centrism as a top value and then if you have a second or third value of affluence or work centrism it starts to their conflicts really start to merge and you walk around your whole life with an uh-oh feeling in your stomach how do you how do you I mean I feel that on the mom thing I mean it's it's it's

I've seen it with my own. I mean, like, yeah, I just, I guess I'm curious, how do you see the world? Like, when you walk into interactions with people, are you immediately, like, going to your bad? Are you, like, undressing people? I try not to do that. But do you? Look, look, it's hard for me not to be sussing out people's values when I'm talking to them.

I mean, or there are anyagram type? I mean, it's really hard. Look, it's my work, and it's my, and so I'm listening for it. It's like, but I also, you know, I'm a regular person. I'll, like, go out for dinner with my kids and we don't talk about values sometimes. I mean, I try not to do it all the time. But if you meet it, okay. I think in that way I'm like a psychiatrist.

Okay, I don't know if a psychiatrist, a person who's a trained psychiatrist can like have a normal. I mean, this is why the children of psychiatrists all have a support group for each other because it's pretty, it's hard to separate that. I struggle with it. I struggle with it from my work, right? Because I meet so many family systems and so many people and I make assumptions based on people that I've met in the past and so on and so forth. But in a hypothetical world, you do meet. romantic interest right in the next week and you're taken back the same way do you immediately then go to this is different we have a values disconnect I would say I mean

like I've not met any romantic interest but I would say that you know I definitely I I definitely think about people who I know who are in marriages who have values disconnects but I will tell you the other night I was with my daughter and my soon-to-be son-in-law and they said you know mom we're going to we're going to finally take the values bridge and i said oh okay and they went into the next room to take it at the same time and the values which has a functionality where if two people opt in it will show you your values with that other person right up next to each other and will show you all the conflicts and harmonies that you have um and so i said great just check the little box and you'll find out how your

values align or don't align and then i went to sit down in my desk and they were across the house and then like kind of 30 minutes later i heard my daughter go mom come on you're here come do kind of a live, you know, reading of our values for us. And I kind of crept in because I love him so much and I love them together. And I was like, this is the moment of truth. I think they share their values. Get a load of this. Their top six values exactly the same.

Which is good. I was like tears pouring down my face. Like this is the best news a mother could get because their values are exactly aligned. And I think this is, I mean, I felt strongly positive feelings about them anyway. I also say that with my other son and his wife, I had them. take the enneagram. I had to suspicions about this. And they talk about child and sweetheart. They met when they were 14 still together. They're in their 30s. Happily married. Exact same eneagram type. And I thought, oh, no wonder they get along. They are the same person.

I feel so much pressure for you. Yeah. Because what if the top six aren't aligned or a girlfriend calls you up and says like, I'm really having this issue with, you have this responsibility. Like people come to you for honest assessment. But you've got the same thing. You get the same thing. I think you know what it is. It is my, it is my destiny, right? It's my, I'm in my, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm living my purpose. I, it's okay. It's fine.

Look, I'll tell you, sometimes it's like, oh, because of my, a child of mine, I'm going to be really vague here. A child of mine has a very close friend who I love and know very well is getting married. She's been with the same guy, 14 years, they haven't got married, they've finally getting married. They took the values bridge and I got a call from this child of mine saying, mom, you've got to talk to my friend, their values bridge results came in. Did I want to do it?

I know already they shouldn't get married to each other. Okay, I've been with them together, and I've thought, please run, run as fast as you can. I've thought about the friend. And so I said, can I just speak to her alone? I don't want to speak to them together. I don't want to do marriage counseling with them, which I do have done, and I'm doing with another couple right now, but it's a different situation. And I spoke to her alone, and she said, I want to start this conversation by saying,

I understand how hard this must be for you. You saw our results. And she said, I want you to know that every single conflict that was identified in our values bridge results has already surfaced in marriage counseling for the past six years. So they've been in marriage counseling. They're not even married. They've been in marriage counseling for six years and every single issue. So the values bridge, look, that's an efficacy point for me.

The test showed it in 20 minutes. And they had six years when they've identified every single one of these things. And she said, well, we want to get married. I said, if you've made the decision to get married, I'm not going to, you know, the results are the results. And your life is going to be a long conversation about how people with such different values can build a life together. Is radius high for you? Yeah, radius is like number two or three. Yeah. So you have a deep, I mean, you are. You are changing. I might feel like my work has the power to change lives in a way. Look, what I would say, a lot of gratifying things have

happened since becoming you went out into the world. But one of the most gratifying. things that ever happened to me, and this speaks to my radio stuff, is I do these workshops on the NYU campus, but they're open to the public, right? People come from around the world to go to them. It's beautiful, and I'm very happy to be able to teach becoming you to other people besides NYU students, although that's my day job. And a woman came, and she was in her 60s, and she had finished working, she had a long, successful career, and she was taking Becoming You, because she wanted to know what to do with her third half. You know, she has 20, 30 more years to go, and she said, what do I do now that I kind of do anything.

And she came in, she took the class. She was a different kind of student. She learned all the value stuff. She did the Values Bridge. And a few weeks later, she wrote me an email. She didn't call me, but she wrote me an email, and she said, I went home. I had all of my adult children take the Values Bridge. And we had the first true, loving, and civilized conversation that we've had in about

10 years. And so with the values bridge and the language of values, she was able to finally speak to her adult children again. And I thought, if it was just for this one woman and this one family, everything I've done is worth it. I mean, you get this feeling all the time when you fix a family or you help fix a family. So yeah, radius is high for me because if there's 30 of those conversations, my work on this earth is done. And I think there's been more. So I'm, I love that part of it. I love that part of it. No, I mean, look, you have thousands of students flying off to take your class to 50,000 people since May, that's not

a small number. No, no. You know, so this is incredible work that you're doing and obviously people are finding it. I found it very valuable. I found it very helpful. I would recommend it to anyone because I so I believe that in my recovery I was given this gift which is I was able to do this work and come

out on the other side of it and really have a sense of purpose and passion for me. It was taking this recovery thing and making it my whole life. I mean like I was so pat and people are. always say like you love the rehab you went to you like you like you like root for them like someone would root for like duke basketball like you love all you know it's like it's like crazy

but like yeah i was going to lean into that because it felt right yeah it felt good like i'm proud that i'm a drug addict i'm proud that i did heroin and now i'm in recovery and i speak about it that way because it's just that's what it is for me yeah but you're helping so many people by speaking and i just feel like the thing the reason i ask if you're like undressing people when you meet them because I do that sometimes right like I just I meet people and I'm like oh god this person is just not living yeah free yeah but you know I think even if you're not in our line of work you do it I mean I think everybody kind of does it is that we are always judging people I mean I try to be you know one of the not judging it's sad it's like a sadness it's like I just wish this

person have okay say analyzing people we are yeah we meet somebody and we go to a cocktail party and we sit next to somebody and we're kind of our brain there's like in our brain like they're happy they're not happy you know they're this they're that we're we're assessing people and we always are I mean we just have more tools you and I and to be doing it and you I've got well Jay is like in deep thought over here are you contemplating everything no I'm thinking of I'm thinking about everything about my whole life I'm not the long decisions I've made no I'm just kidding I'm just kidding but no but I am I do think that this is profound is profound work and these are like organizing principles to like you what do you think you're talking

value is. What do you think it is? You've heard me throw a few out there. Is it belovedness? Is it family centriism? Is it work centristism? Achievement? You don't have to take the test. But any of these, do you hear any of them and say go let that's me? I think that the biggest conflict for me has been in my life is that I have these big ideas and a lot of ambition. And when I was younger and even in recovery, I'm 17 years sober. I wanted it, that ambition and achievement. Achievement. That's achievement. Yeah. To be. around helping people and I've been very effective

at helping people but I wouldn't say that's truly my core value you know right and that's that's confusing to say out loud I guess like to give you it's fine yeah to give you perspective like I'm in I was an actor

I'm in and I spent many years chasing that dream I've always had big dreams before that it was I was going to be a 510 Jewish kid in the NBA that well that didn't happen And now I'm still pursuing, like I'm, I wrote a movie. I'm trying to direct it. I've spent like a couple years trying to get this off the ground.

And this story, though, is very personal. I think it has universal appeal because it's a very specific thing. But it's about, you know, the ideas of me, you know? I'm wondering about where luminance would show up for you. I'm sure. But I wrestle with that. It's fine. It's fine.

I mean, I can't wait for Lady Gaga to take it so we can have somebody with number one Luminance to be our spokesperson. I think that it's... Luminous is wanting to be famous. Yeah, but see, this is what I, this is what confused me about Jay, and I'd love for you to pressure test this for us real quick, is like, so I've known Jay for many years, and when I started to do this show, I was like, I think it'd be really nice to have someone sitting next to me.

Like, he's very smart. He asks great questions. And I know that you have wanted this level of like, hey, I want to be out in front a little bit. Yeah. And I feel like when we got to the point where I was like, come be my co-host, you kind got scared. Because I don't want to be out in front in this, in that way.

I don't want, like, I'm not trying to be in, I'm not, like, the idea, I'm calling bullshit, but, but I'll explain. I have two friends, I have a friend and they, they sent their two kids to school last week and they did the cheesy thing on Instagram, like, you know, first day of school for Johnny. And both those kids said they want to be influencers. To me, there's nothing. I, I sort of want what you said, which is like, what I do, what I care about, what

mean something to me. I want that to be recognized. That's achievement. So that would be achievement. I do think there's some luminance going on. I don't know well enough. But I think that somebody who's directing and pushing a movie forward and has been an actor is, have you ever tried stand-up? I have tried stand-up. That was just an excuse to yell. She's good. She's good. I'm just saying there might be some luminance going to take it. Well, I'm already on. Oh my, Grace. Grace Adams is in the room. Like she went. So Grace, she came to me. So she's the best story, Grace. So she's, she's been working for us for like three and a half years now because she's basically three and a half year sober when she was in our program she sat me down she said you're giving me a job she's like

and it was like I was like okay and like we gave her an into and now she or she has crushed have you guys taken it. Oh my God. Oh you're gonna. Remind your names. Elisa and you do the social media and the marketing. Yeah. And then we have. Issa. Okay. Amazing. And have. Of course they've taken it. I know. We sit around the office. Like if you look at our bios on our who we are page on our website becoming you labs.com, which talks all about the work we do. Literally in the bios everybody states their values. I mean, it's just

sort of like, you know what it is? It's like when you guys say how long sober you are, 19 years, 17 years, three years sober. That's what we say. We like my top value is, okay? My top value, by the way, I've never stated, my number one value is cosmos, which is faith in God. And so get out of here. That's what I was going to ask you. That's what I was going to

ask you is where... Now we're done. Okay. No, we're going guy. You're going to drop God. in the 67th minute here. But I mean, sometimes people say, where does that all fall? God, spirituality, faith, kism, and all that. There's a value called cosmos, which is how much the organizing principle of your life is your faith tradition.

So for me, it's cosmos. I mean, it's, I've been a Christian since I was 14 years old. And so I mean, church? Yeah, went to church yesterday Sunday, wasn't it? Yeah. But does it have to be organized religion or is it just more of like a sort of? Okay. So organized religion tends to be the organizing principle.

But if your faith, I mean, what it doesn't capture is astrology. Okay. But, and I just can't figure out a way to make the same questions. What do you think about astrology? You know, power to whoever. I mean, I have friends who. Stay with God. I have friends who really dig it.

And I, but I mean, it's, I think. Well, when you were doing a reading like that, it reminded me of like, I think it's not, it's not, I don't, I think it's kind of crazy because I don't understand how you account for, like, Cesarian sections and so forth. I mean, we could go down this rabbit hole. But I am not. You thought about it. I'm not.

Yeah. It's fine. I mean, my daughter, when she chose her wedding date, They went and checked the moon phases, and I was like, good, freaking God. Okay, but whatever, they did it. Okay. And it all lines up. Yes, you were going to say something about this.

Yeah, no, so look, I'm a faithful person, a super faithful person. I think that that is my big order. Do you pray on your knees? Yeah, I do. So do I. Yeah. That's something I learned in recovery. He used to freak Jack out.

Jack did not. Jack always came to church with me. He was culturally Catholic, but then learned a lot more about the Bible when we got together. And at our church in Palm Beach, and where we used to go in the wintertime when it came time to pray people got on their knees and he would like I am not doing that and then he would say I can't get up from then I was like I could help you up and he was like I'm not doing that but I don't care how anybody pray I don't I mean I only care about how I pray so yeah I mean that's what something someone one of my mentors maybe even it was Jay early on said you can just talk to God like you're talking to your

friend that's right at Zach I'm here today like I'm interviewing Susie like help me find the right words if it go you know show me the path all that kind of good stuff right i mean right and and you absolutely it's the relationship it's having a relationship yes a personal relationship yeah and also like what paul says is you we can really go down this hole for a long time but what paul says is you don't even need words if you just have the feelings it's enough i agree with that i mean i feel that and sometimes that's all i do have you had a pretty high value of cosmos i didn't mention it it was pretty high for you actually i think it was six i mean like i i i know like when i i i know like when i I'm going to bed at night that I should get out and pray on my knees.

Like if I'm like, if I'm like setting the alarm, I'm like, but like if I get too lazy to do that, I'll sit there and kind of just not even say it out loud. I like to pray out loud, but I will sit there and I'll feel it or I'll work my way through it. Yeah. That feels like enough for me. And that's all, that's good. If it feels like enough. But I do wish I went to church more. I like, I grew up Presbyterian.

We kind of did the Christmas Easter, the Chester thing, you know, like it was. Yeah, I mean, the Christmas Easter are great. That's where everybody shows up. It's sort of the in-between. times, you know, when you don't have the big fanfare. I mean, I kind of, I love both those holidays. But for me, with kids, I'm also thinking, like, I'm sitting there thinking I've got to go home and cook for 22 people. So I'm, you know, whatever. But I think that it's just good for me. Look, everybody has got their own. And some people have had unbelievably terrible experiences with

organized religion. I totally get it. I think that my, I'm not a Catholic, but my Catholic friends had a very hard time when the church was going through it. But, I mean, institutions, are like families and they they screw up badly and uh but we still love our families even though they keep hurting us again and again and so i are your kids connected to religion yeah they were raised in religion i mean i think look at a certain point they had to go their own way and you have to have your own relationship with god and i think they all do so if and i think they all do so with that couple though that you that you like their values don't align and they're and they're going to go get married if cosmos was number one on that or something very high up what could it be that

well listen we both believe in God we're very devout and we can make this work we're making a decision and we're going to go down this path as partners I would tell you that if you share Cosmos as as a if you share just one top value a marriage can be built around it so I I know a couple where they the hurt in that marriage is unbelievable they four children he had an affair she took him back he hadn't another affair she took him back again and they everybody was saying oh my God they're going to get divorced it was very popular public in our, in my sort of community that I am in. And it was brutal and it was too bad because everybody really like both of them and they still stay together. And I was like observing them

and observing them. And I remember saying to one of my daughters, they must have great sex. I said, I bet you they both have high eudamonia and something is saving that marriage because the hurt, the public hurt, the shame, everything is going on. And she's like, mom, that's so unlike you to have that thought. And I said, yes, but I was, I was psychoanalyzing this, but, you know, my own way, this marriage. And about, I don't know, two summers ago, I was with the wife and we were getting ice cream or something like that. And I said to her, I'm just so glad you and so-and-so made it.

And she said, thank God for the sex. And I thought, oh, I want to get, I can't tell my daughter that I was right, you know. And I just, it's that. No, sex is important. It is. And it can save a marriage. It can because you can come back to that place. And I think God is the same way.

Okay? And so you can have one value. Sex and God, baby. Yeah. What else? I'm in. Cigarettes, I guess. And I mean, it's just a ought to be one other thing. But I mean, I think, look, you know what else also going to save a marriage? Family centrism. And it has saved marriages where you're just at odds with each other, but you love the idea of your family and you love your kids so much. I mean, it's a pretty crappy thing, though, when the kids know you hate each other. So, you know, the biggest gift you can give your kids is a happy marriage.

Okay, two quick questions. Go, go, you go. Because here's the thing. Yeah. And this relates to what something you were asking her. the five-year-old kid doesn't want to go to church does as the parent in the parenting style that you believe are you saying no you're just going to go to church

or do you let him tell you that he's not going to church that's five years old five years old should not be telling you anything okay except for like I mean if the childhood at what age do they say at what age when someone says I'm not going to church do you say okay we'll see when we get back when my kids when they went to college they had to get to make that own choice when they went to college yeah Interesting. So do you think they viewed you as a strict mom? Oh my God. Yes. Okay. And now you're saying, but now, now, the enforcer. Yeah. Now you're saying you're seeing them exhibit more, most gentle. You couldn't be closer to my, your kids and I am my, my best, absolute best friend. So I was very, very strict and thank God. And having it worked out. I mean, I was very clear with them. And I remember my daughter saying to me, we raised our kids in New York City. And my daughter saying to me, I am the only person in my high school who has a curfews.

And Jack and I smiled said, too bad. You know, didn't give it. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you have a curfew because nothing good is actually, for a 10th grader, nothing good is happening after midnight. Of course. Did your parents give you curfews? After 10?

No curfews, neither. Are you from, where are you guys from? Oh. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Did your kids rebel, though, when they went to college? Were they like, you know, not a few hours?

You're nuts. No, you know why? Because by that time, I'd convince them that I had eyes on every part of my body. They were scared to me even when they were in college. Yeah. No, they're all squares like I am. Squares? No, I think that they possibly, well,

I mean, my youngest daughter has been arrested a few times, but it's for animal rights activism. Oh, amazing. Okay. So, we're running, we're running a little hot here. Yes, I don't know. But the family center is, though, for you, does that surprise you?

Because my thing, what I'm thinking is, you know, like, look, you're 41, you haven't gotten married. You don't have kids, and it's not that you won't or that it's not that it's not important to you. It's just that like these other areas of your life drive you. Right. That's right. If you had higher family sessions, you would have.

I have a contract. I talked to my therapist about this a lot with, I have a contract with myself around my parents because I believe that they save my life that if they ask me to do something, I'm showing up. And I show up for them in a pretty significant way. Like they were going to, they're in Europe right now. So I drove to the shore Friday night to go be with them. And then Saturday, drive them to the Philadelphia airport so that they had like a a comfortable, which is like as a 41 year old guy, do I really need to be doing that for my

grown adult parents? No, but it's like they showed up for me in such a significant way that if there's little things that I can do. And maybe that's a living amends or whatever that is. Yeah, no, that's beautiful. I mean, but you know, that you're not organizing your lives around them. I mean, when they need you, you're there. I mean, this weekend I did. Okay, this weekend. Yeah. I mean, 365 days a year is a different thing. Of course. But this is my question, Susie, because it's something that I should like and you are very confident you are clearly very smart and knowledgeable who who do you ask for help like how do you take care of you know like this is like a real question because like I struggle with this too I mean I I I have so many

I feel like your friends are to use the same metaphor that your friends are like all tiles in the mosaic of your life and so I feel like I have a council of elders and youngers around me where I ask different advice. I mean, I am, maybe I'm confident, but I am very, I think I have a lot of humility in that I just don't know what I don't know. So I ask a lot of you, my sisters I'm really close to. I have so many good girlfriends. I have a lot of business friends.

So I'm always asking for help. I need help. Do you allow yourself to be vulnerable? I think I'm always vulnerable. I think you seem very open-minded and for someone who knows so much, and it's like an expert in what you do know. Like you seem very open-minded and grounded. and humble.

And we've talked to people and we know a lot of people that are just not like that. No, some of these conversations are hard. I mean, I think you gotta be because the world is a complicated place. What do you think about the world today? No, that's a big question.

In 2025, but you're around these young kids who are coming up and trying to figure out the, you know. Okay, here's what I think. I actually, I do have a view of this. I think that people, human beings and humanity has always worked itself out of a pickle. I mean, I think, you know, I remember some students saying to me one time, I can't have kids because I can't bring kids into this world.

I hate that. I know. And I said, she, thank God, not everybody felt that way during, like, the black plague, you know, during the bubonic plague. Like, the world, like, imagine how people felt in London after it was bombed smithereens in World War II or how people felt in Japan after the bomb was dropped. Like, people have done terrible, brutal, cruel, ruthless things to each other since we were put on this earth. And people, good has always prevailed. And people have always pulled themselves out. There's just the, the small margin between good and evil.

Good has always come back again. And in every single generation from the beginning of time, people have thought evil is going to win, and it doesn't. But what is evil in your, and I'm not trying to get political or anything like that. I'm not trying to bend it. But like, what is evil in your, is it the absence of virtues? Is it, you know, the, you know, not lack of awareness? Is it, you know, just fear as an operating principle that people, people aren't aware of? I mean, evil is really big. I mean, evil is, evil is, uh, the just

our lesser angels. I mean, it's the cruelty, it's meanness, it's small-mindedness. It's the inability to forgive. I mean, because we are, nobody can forgive but God. And so we just have to give that away. I mean, we can't judge because we, we couldn't be judged ourselves. And so I think evil is just the dark impulses of humanity, which have been, since there have been people. yeah this was awesome i wish we had more time i want to say it's the first time i've been on a podcast where i've been asked what evil is but i great i i've so so thank you for that i would love to lay down now all right so no i mean evil is it's a you said a dark impulses though you know and it's just this impulse to be me and i think there's a desire within every human to be evil at times like like

okay i think there's i think actually there's there's the capacity i would say capacity, yeah. Desire's part. I like how you are making me really think about the language that I use. I appreciate that. Thank you. I mean, I think this has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you. Thank you. So I'm going to say something here as we finish. We have had a lot of people come on this show with a lot of really big ideas, a lot of really like, but not everyone has the kind of it to back it up.

And Susie does. She's got her book, which I'm holding, which is becoming you. And then there's the simplest thing to do is just go on and take the test. Take the Valuesbridge. It's at the Valuesbridge.com or just go to the website and look around or go to my social media. I'm always blabbing away. Grace is taking the test as we speak. Have you taken it yet?

Okay, you've got a DM me. Have you gotten your results here, Grace? I know who graces are. Is it appropriate to have an entire company take it? Yeah, we love it when people. We love it when organizations take it happens all the time. Yeah. Yeah, I just wouldn't.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. And then how else do people find you? What is the best way to interact with you or interact with your stuff? Yeah, I mean, there's, hello at susy welch.com. That's a good way where, you know, hello at susy welch.com. take a workshop, follow me on social media. I've got a website.

Social media is great. Yeah. It is because, I mean, I just wake up every morning and I start looking at the DMs that come in. And, I mean, people are just, they, I think they're vulnerable. And they say, here's where I'm hurting. And it's a, it's a credible thing to be able to talk to them. We're doing incredible work.

Thank you for being so gracious with your time. Thank you for having me. And I'm hoping that we can start to have some collaboration here. I appreciate you. That sounds great. Great job, Jay. Thank you. Thanks, Jay. Thanks, Susie. Thanks, Grace. Thanks, guys.

That's a wrap.