Becoming You with Suzy Welch

How long can you hold your breath? That's what it feels like when you're not living one of your top values: like being underwater, searching for a surface you can't see.This week on Please Advise, Suzy talks to Michelle, an architect and firm partner in her early 40s with three kids in first, second, and third grade. Michelle took the Values Bridge last year and found the results transformational, but one thing surprised her. Her top values are a tie between Eudemonia (wellbeing, self-care, balance) and Beholderism (a love of beautiful things), yet work has always felt central to her life. Her question: can work or family be how you live your values, even if they aren't values themselves?Then Michelle shares a number that stops the conversation: a 72% Authenticity Gap on Eudemonia, which is the distance between how much she wants to live that value and how much she actually does. Suzy's rule of thumb is that anything over 50% means the house is on fire.Why is the gap so big, and what closes it? Suzy's diagnosis comes from a value Michelle barely mentioned, and the prescription is surprisingly doable.Have a question for Please Advise? Submit it here.As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge. You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the ⁠Becoming You newsletter⁠ for fresh new content in one tidy package.Want more Becoming You? Check out the ⁠Becoming You book⁠.You can follow and tag Suzy on:• Instagram: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• Linkedin: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• TikTok: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• YouTube: ⁠@suzywelch_⁠• X: ⁠@SuzyWelch⁠

Suzy is obsessed with her grandchildren. Completely, unapologetically obsessed. But for most of her life, she didn't organize her decisions around family, and for a long time that came with a question a lot of people are afraid to ask: Does putting myself before my family make me a bad person?Becoming You is about figuring out what actually matters to you so you can make better choices about your work, your relationships, and your life. One way to get there is the Values Bridge, Suzy’s scientifically validated assessment that identifies the values that really drive you, not the ones you think you're supposed to have. In this 16-part series, Suzy is exploring those values one at a time. This week: Familycentrism, one of the most emotionally loaded values of all. Family therapist Vienna Pharaon joins Suzy to unpack why family comes with so many expectations and why the "black sheep" is often just the person with lower Familycentrism. Then Becoming You certified coach Lola Persons gets personal about loving her family fiercely without building her life around them, and why she calls it "not the Brady Bunch, but it's okay."Because maybe the question was never how much you love your family. Maybe it's how much of your life you want to organize around them, and whether we can stop judging the people who answer differently. Where does Familycentrism fall for you? Take the Values Bridge to find out, with a discount code in the show notes.As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge. Find Vienna Pharaon on Instagram, Substack, and find her book "The Origins of You" here, along with her quiz here. Find Lola Persons on LinkedIn here. You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the ⁠Becoming You newsletter⁠ for fresh new content in one tidy package.Want more Becoming You? Check out the ⁠Becoming You book⁠.You can follow and tag Suzy on:• Instagram: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• Linkedin: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• TikTok: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• YouTube: ⁠@suzywelch_⁠• X: ⁠@SuzyWelch⁠

Jes is 27, works in the nonprofit sector, and has a not-so-secret dream: she wants to be a writer. The problem, as she sees it, is a values conflict — she wants her work to be seen, but she doesn't want to be famous, and she wants to make money, but writing doesn't pay unless you're willing to put your whole life on display.This week on Please Advise, Suzy starts down that path with Jes, but the conversation doesn't stay there. Underneath the values question is a harder one nobody had asked yet: does Jes actually have the aptitude to be a writer, or does she just love the idea of it? Suzy calls in some radical candor to find out.What emerges isn't "don't chase the dream." There’s a sharper, more useful answer, and Suzy helps Jes map out a path that actually aligns. It's a conversation about ambition, honesty, and the difference between an interest and an aptitude. As Suzy puts it, an interest without the aptitude to back it up has another name: a hobby.Have a question for Please Advise? Submit it here.As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge. You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the ⁠Becoming You newsletter⁠ for fresh new content in one tidy package.Want more Becoming You? Check out the ⁠Becoming You book⁠.You can follow and tag Suzy on:• Instagram: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• Linkedin: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• TikTok: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• YouTube: ⁠@suzywelch_⁠• X: ⁠@SuzyWelch⁠

There may be no value more contentious than this one — so contentious that Suzy Welch almost didn't include it in her own methodology at all.This episode is the next installment of an epic 16-part deep dive, one episode for each of the 16 values in the language Suzy created with the Values Bridge, her scientifically validated assessment tool. This week's value is Cosmos — faith, in any tradition, not one in particular — and it's the most polarized value on the entire Values Bridge at that. Suzy sits down with Ryan Burge, professor at Washington University in St. Louis, author of “The Vanishing Church,” and the researcher behind the Substack “Graphs About Religion,” to unpack the state of faith in America today. Suzy also gets personal, telling the story of her own faith journey since age 14, and confessing something she's never said on the podcast before. Tune in for more.If you liked this episode, please leave a review! Take the Values Bridge yourself and find out where Cosmos falls for you, with the link and discount code below.As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge. Find Ryan Burge's Substack "Graphs About Religion" here, his book "The Vanishing Church" here, and X, LinkedIn, Instagram. You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the ⁠Becoming You newsletter⁠ for fresh new content in one tidy package.Want more Becoming You? Check out the ⁠Becoming You book⁠.You can follow and tag Suzy on:• Instagram: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• Linkedin: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• TikTok: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• YouTube: ⁠@suzywelch_⁠• X: ⁠@SuzyWelch⁠

Lily is 68, newly retired, and bored out of her mind. What she really wants now is to do something so scary it keeps her up at night.This week as season 1 of Please Advise continues, Suzy talks to Lily, who's had more lives than most: news anchor, reporter, road manager for a band touring Quebec, medical claims specialist, full-time felting artist (yes, a piece of hers once went to Stevie Nicks), and, most recently, a coordinator at the VA. She's got the courage, the resume, and even a vision board, but one thing keeps holding her back: a very low tolerance for financial risk.Suzy digs into Lily's values, aptitudes, and interests, and lands on the breakthrough — which isn't even the idea itself. It's Suzy's reframe of how to get there. Stop imagining the five-day version and start with the five-hour one. Small experiments, low risk, real data, one step before the next.It's a conversation about courage at any age, the difference between dreaming big and starting small, and why it's never too late to place the chips on yourself.Have a question for Please Advise? Submit it here.As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge. You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the ⁠Becoming You newsletter⁠ for fresh new content in one tidy package.Want more Becoming You? Check out the ⁠Becoming You book⁠.You can follow and tag Suzy on:• Instagram: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• Linkedin: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• TikTok: ⁠@suzywelch⁠• YouTube: ⁠@suzywelch_⁠• X: ⁠@SuzyWelch⁠