← Becoming You with Suzy Welch
Becoming You with Suzy Welch
All I Want for Christmas is the Truth About Me
00:20:11
And that's what you'll get on Christmas, too -- if you look at your wishlist with new eyes. In this episode of Becoming You, Suzy suggests that your Christmas desires -- unwrapped -- are usually big, flashing arrows pointing directly at your values. And to demonstrate that, she takes us through the three things she is hoping to see under the tree Christmas morning, and ponders what they reveal about her heart, what it so ardently wants. What is your Christmas list telling you about your dream of a life? What is it telling you about your journey to make it reality? Tune in and find out.
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Sometimes we think what we want for Christmas is just what we want for Christmas. But what we want for Christmas is so much more that you really, really have to let yourself know that. Merry Christmas or Merry Christmas Eve. If you are listening to this PODC cast just as it comes out. And if you are, I love you. Thank you. I love this season. It's so filled with expectation, isn't it? Even if you don't celebrate Christmas, it's still kind of magical in a way. You can be opening gifts tomorrow no matter what you celebrate. We have a gorgeous tree. I am going to be the first one down the stairs, I bet. Why? Because my kids are grown and they don't run down the stairs like maniacs at 5am anymore. They. They wake up and they actually eat breakfast. I will be waiting by the tree. And you know what I want to do? I want to do in this podcast is I want to tell you about the three gifts that I really want tomorrow on Christmas. Because I think knowing what we want and why we want it is so freaking good for us. Hey. Hi. Hello, everyone. It's Susie Welch. Welcome to Becoming youg. I am a professor at NYU Stern School of Business, and I'm also the director of the NYU Stern Initiative on Purpose and Flourishing. And this podcast is about purpose and flourishing. Each week we explore in one way or another what you should do with your life so that you are living your purpose and you are flourishing in the meantime. And if you're new here, hey, welcome. I'm so happy you're here. Let me just quickly say that becoming you is actually technically a methodology to help you discover your purpose. Becoming you is based on the premise that your purpose lies right at the intersection of your values, your aptitudes, and your interests. And then if you know those, you're going to know your purpose. And today's episode focuses on values. And I don't want to get. I'm not going to get too academic on you here, because values are actually the raw material of our life. Every single person has them. They are our wants. Okay? That's very simply what they are. Who we want to be, what we want to do with our life, how we want to live. Values are very granular. How much money we want is a value. How many friends we want, that's a value. How much love we want. How many achievements we want, how many experiences we want. These are values. Values are really hard. They're hard to know sometimes. They're very hard to admit, and we don't automatically know them, just by living a lot of time. Times we've got to dig, dig, dig to get at them. And that's okay, because our values are hard to admit because sometimes we think people judge them. Like, say one of your values is money. You want to be rich. And, you know, there's not a lot of societal love for that. Or sometimes we really want conventional success, okay? Like, we really. We want to be a CEO, we want a promotion, and there's a little stink off of it, okay? There's a value called beholderism, which is actually a value about how much you care about how you look and how your stuff looks. I'm off the charts. I care how I Look. I'm 65. I'm thinking about it all the time. Fr. Okay? I care about how my house looks like. I just do. I brush my dogs every day. I care how much. I don't care about how my dogs look, all right? And I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I'm not hurting anybody. I'm supporting a lot of people in the makeup and hair industry, I'll tell you that. And I'd say that people that find out that they have a lot of this value, this care about aesthetics, they don't really want to admit it out loud, okay? Where some values get a lot of love. Oh, I have the value of non sibi. That's the value. That's the term we use for wanting to help people. That's a value, by the way, how much we want to help people. Some people have a lot of it, and some people not so much. And, you know, I myself, personally, living and breathing and working in this space as a researcher and a social scientist and a professor, I actually am a true values agnostic. I don't care what your values are if you're not hurting anybody. I say this to my students all the time. It's kind of revolutionary to them because they're so used to people judging their values, okay? And I say have whatever values you want. Have them, own them, admit them, if they're not hurting anybody, okay? So I think we gotta stop hating on ourselves and certain values. But the first thing to do is to understand what your values are and. And admit them out loud. So the way we get at values is through testing. You can take a test, you can take any test. You don't have to just take mine. And there's books you can read, and there's conversations you can have, and you can have exercises. But I like to say that sometimes the best data about what our values are. That's just. It's just our life. It's just how we spend our time, how we spend our money. And frankly, where I'm going with this, if you were wondering, is what we want for Christmas, that is data about our values. And that's why I'm going to share with you my Christmas wish list. I've been thinking about it so hard, and I'm thinking, why, why, why do I want these things? Well, because they are a direct line. They're a direct microscope onto what my values are. And it is always important to be paying attention to our wants because that is some of the richest, loamiest, to use a gardening term database for our values that there are. And that's why we're here on Christmas talking about our wants. Well, frankly, we're talking about my wants. So let me walk you through my Christmas wish list. What I want under the tree this year. And actually, these are just about. Just about what I really want from life. Right. Okay. Let's get to my Christmas wish list. And you know what? I'm just going to say right here, there's a small, small, small chance I get this, but it's infinitesimal. All right, But I'm gonna say it anyway. And here is number one. I want Susie the swan to come home. I have to tell you who she is if you've not been with us for a while. Look, I'm a widow. I lost my husband on March 1, 2020, okay? And very shortly after, I got this house in the countryside, which is where I go often to hear myself think. And I run there on the weekends sometimes if I'm lucky. And few years ago, one day, I was walking around the little pond right behind my house, and there was this beautiful white swan by herself. And we all know swans mate for life. And it was so peculiar that this single swan was in my pond. And I became incredibly attached to her because she was clearly a member of a pair and something happened to her partner. And of course, I could very deeply relate to her. And I remember saying to my dogs, yes, my. My constant companion, my dogs, because I was by myself, I said, look, there's a beautiful swan on the pond. So the pond is this natural pond. It has, like, weeping willows around it. And I remember one time I was walking around it and I thought this might be my happiest place in the world because it's just this perfect length walk with the dogs, and it's serene and tranquil, and maybe you can guess that Serenity and tranquility are not frequent companions of mine in my life, and it actually just sort of stops me. But the thing about the pond is that it's static, right? It's always the same. Each day I walk around it. That's part of what I love about it. And the beautiful thing about the swan was that she made the pond into a relationship with me. Like, I would come out, she would come and greet us. She would paddle alongside us. I would observe her, she would observe me. I would watch where she had nested the night before, and she took to me, I think, because I would walk the dogs around the pond in the morning, and she would paddle alongside us. And I named her Susie after myself. It's totally cringe. And, in fact, I would often greet her by saying, good morning, Susie. And I used to do this all the time. And then one day, I remembered walking around the pond with one of my kids or two of my kids who came to visit for the weekend. And I said, look, there's Susie the swan. And they were like, screaming, what have you done? And I said, I've named this swan Susie. And they're like, that's so cringe. I was like, I am cringe. Okay, I'm gonna get a T shirt that says I am cringe on it. But I loved her, and obviously I was relating very deeply to her. And she stayed for a year or two, actually. I saw her every day, and I worried about her when it got cold. And we would address each other. I know. I know you're thinking I'm Delulu, but I loved her. And actually, one time, some friends were visiting from out of town, and we were walking, and she emerged, and I said, look, I have a swan on my pond. And they said, oh, my God, Susie. Did you place her? And I said, no. God did. And I really do feel there was something kind of divine about this single swan appearing when I needed her. You know why? She gave me the courage to be alone. She was like this beautiful, noble, regal, brave swan who was meant to be in a couple, and she was alone. And I was that swan. I was a person who was meant to be still in my marriage with my husband. And it was not God's plan for us. And he faced it so bravely and so nobly, and he. He faced it better than I did, that's for sure. And. And I thought Susie was there for me. And I thought that she was there to remind me that this is something that people survive. And I am praying that Christmas morning I Wake up and I look out the window and Susie the swan is back. And I. Maybe I grew too attached to her. I must have, because I loved her so much. And then on July 4th of this year, there were fireworks in my town. And they went on for hours and hours and hours and it was not pleasant. If you own a dog, you know what fireworks can be like. I wish I was the person who loved fireworks, but no, I am the grump who hates them because of dogs. I didn't think about Susie during those fireworks. I was too busy trying to peel my dog out from underneath the covers. Anyway, the next morning I went out to take the walk with the dogs and I was halfway around the pond and I was like, where is she? And I turned to my dogs and I said, where's Susie the swan? Once again, they did not answer. And I got a little bit frantic and I immediately went to my computer as soon as we got home and I went to ChatGPT. Isn't this sort of sad? Right? I asked the machine. So I typed into ChatGPT. I've had a swan on my pond for years, but this morning she was gone. Where did she go? Will she ever come back? So the cursor then went on. It pulsed and then it told me all the reasons that she might have left me, that she might have seen a fox or she may have seen a coyote, or she may have gone to find a mate, left me to go find a mate, or she might have experienced some disturbances. And, well, of course, we had had the fourth of July the night before. But at the end, Chachi PT wrote back to me. Swans often return to their familiar territories, so she might come back again once conditions are favorable again. And you know, I'm telling you Christmas Eve, the conditions are favorable. I think about her more than I should because I miss the courage she gave me. Anyway, I would like to look out on Christmas morning and I'd love to see her back on the pond like she was last Christmas. Well, there's a value called belonging. I call this the love value. It's the value about how much you want to be in relationships. How much do you want to be in relationship with friends or a romantic partner? And I guess this missing and this attachment to her must speak to it because I'll tell you something. Look, there are some things about being an independent person. I've never been a single person. It certainly gives you a lot of freedom and agency around your time and what you do with yourself. I can go to bed when I want. I can eat what I want. A lot of things, you just don't end up doing that much in relationship. But I think that I had a stronger, higher value on belonging than I ever knew. And I think that this beautiful white swan had taught me that. Because my missing of her I think is actually my missing of belonging. I think that's what it is. And so there's that value which I never actually gave much credence to. And to tell you the truth, on a lot of the tests, it doesn't pop for me. But my attachment to Susie the swan suggests to me that my belonging might be a value that's a little bit stealth for me. And I don't even want to say it out loud because it means admitting how much I miss it. So that's the number one thing I want to see. Please hope that Susie's there. Wouldn't that be a frickin miracle? Okay, so what do I want? What's the second thing I want for Christmas? Here's another thing that I actually will see Christmas morning. I'm gonna see it. I know it's there and this is it. I want my kids to have more kids. And when I go down Christmas morning, I'm gonna see the big beautiful pregnant stomach of my daughter in law Michelle. And another baby is coming. I already have one granddaughter. It's the greatest thing that ever happened to me was this beautiful little girl. Oh my God, I am going to take her to Paris one day. I cannot wait. But frankly, when I close my eyes and I imagine what I really, really want, I just want them all to be producing a lot of children. And in fact I joke about this, but I started a little company in my mind called ppg. Please produce Grandchildren. And I actually think if I got online and actually made swag that said PPG like on hats, it's like, please produce grandchild is how people my age think constantly. And on the back it said something like, we're waiting. I would be a billionaire. Okay, because this is the secret subtext of every adult person who has children of childbearing age. Now why, why, why do I want to have like this announcement that we're going to have. Like if Michelle said the baby's coming, but we want 20 more, this would be the best Christmas gift I could ever get. Anyway, look, I think this is the value of family centrism, which is family as an organizing principle. Family centrism is a really hard value for me to stare into because it involves star past shortcomings. I really suppressed My family, when I was in hot pursuit of my career. Look, I had my reasons. First of all, no lie. I loved my work, and I love working. But I also felt that at a certain point, your kids leave and what often happens to women, and this is just a personal belief that what happens to women is their kids leave and they don't have any identity. And I used to say to my kids, look, one day you're gonna grow up and you're gonna leave, but I'm still gonna be here, and I wanna be somebody when that happens. I hated the vision of me at age 50 with no identity. And so I worked really hard not to be that person. And it worked okay, because when my kids left and grew and went away, I actually had a spectacular career that I loved. But the kids kind of paid the price. And so every time I think about family centrism and how it wasn't a value of mine for a long time, I think about the ballet recitals I missed, the wrestling matches, I missed homework that I didn't do by their side. I mean, when I hear parents who were at home with their kids talk about what it was like to sort of build the White House out of sugar cubes, which apparently every child in America does, I think, oh, okay. I guess our babysitter did that. And so to come to terms with the fact now, later in life, I think, okay, I overdid it, possibly, and I wanna make up for it. And I want family centrism to come more into the before. With my grandkids leading the way is a little bit about, okay, I overdid a value in the past, and my grandchildren give me a chance to do it again. It's a bit of a mulligan. If you're a golfer, that means a second freebie chance. I'd like to do it better this time. And this is my option today. My kids are my besties. They're adults. They're in their 30s. I talk to them about everything. We laugh our heads off together. We are intimates about. I mean, I have the closest relationship with them now. We're friends, and it's so good. Maybe that's why family centrism has come to the fore. Because being with my kids is like being with my best friends. And I want more of it. That's a new burgeoning value for me. What is it for you? What is is family? Your organizing principle? Is work your organizing principle. These are questions you might ask yourself as you think about what you want for Christmas. Third thing I Want. I'm definitely not getting it because I'm not there yet. And that is finally my PhD, which is. God, keep your fingers crossed. I'm almost done with. I mean, this is a long time in the making. I've postponed it. I've come back to it. I postponed it, but I think it's going to happen. I'm supposed to hand it in January 31st and defend it in March. And then if. If all things align and I don't f it up and everything comes together, I will march across that stage and I will get it in of this year. I want it. And you know what? One of the things I don't really do is party. And I really don't drink. I'm actually kind of a bore. And I have very low eudaimonia, which is a. Which is the value of just fun. I don't know. I don't know. It's just. Work is fun for me. So that's. So that's it. But when I imagine graduating, I actually joke with my team that we're going to have a party where my goal is to get drunk. I want a party. I play music, a lot of pitbull, a lot of just dancing. And I think walking across the stage and feeling that PhD put into my hand is going to be one of the great celebrations of my life. And, you know, it's funny that my version of fun is receiving a PhD. That's sort of tragic, but it is who I am. And this is a gift that's on me. I got to make this gift happen. It's all in the research and the writing. Okay, but what's. What's this about? I want to talk to you about the value behind this and its achievement. This is a value that you have more or less of. I don't care how much you have. I just know how much I have. And for some reason, it's so in me. I. I want this thing. When I went to my boss at NYU Stern, the person who runs my department, a great scholar of negotiation, Steve Blader, because I had to ask him if he would write my Recommendation for the PhD program I was applying to. And I said to him, steve, I think I'm going to go finally get that PhD. And he looked at me with his eyes, like, stunned, and he said, susie, why are you doing this? You don't need it. You're a professor. You're fully credentialed, you've got your mba, everybody respects you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You don't need this. And I said to him, I know, but I want it. And that is a value statement if there ever was one. Why do I want it? There is something about having it that meets my needs. I don't have to apologize because I'm not hurting anybody with it. But the value is achievement. And I would if I could come down and see under the Christmas tree those spectacular PhD robes. I'm not gonna lie, that's part of it. When I'm in graduation at NYU and everybody's wearing their PhD robes and I got my master's robes on, okay, it's a piece of it. But the achievement of it, finishing what I. Okay, lo. This many years ago, I want to finish it. It means something to me. That's the value of achievement. Okay? So my Christmas wishes are about my values. They really are. And I think yours might be too. Our values are our wants. And if we're having problems at a job or problems in a relationship sometimes it's because we are not living our authentic values in that job, job or in that relationship. Or we are in a relationship either at work or in our private life where our values are a mismatch with the person who we're in this ecosystem with. And it's important to talk about the value, not the other person. I have this value. I have this much of it, and you have that much of it. And that's the source of our conflict. This is data. God, we just gotta know it, okay? Because it makes life more harmonious and. And, I don't know a person who doesn't want harmony and flourishing. And that's why we look to understand our values. And that is why I have to tell you about what I am praying is under the tree. To my mind.