How To Never See Anything The Same Again: Part 3 - Becoming You with Suzy Welch

Podcast Summary: Becoming You with Suzy Welch

Episode: How To Never See Anything The Same Again: Part 3
Air Date: February 10, 2026
Host: Suzy Welch, NYU Stern Professor, Author, and Decision-Making Expert

Episode Overview

In the third and final installment of her travel-themed series, Suzy Welch explores how life’s journeys not only take us to new places, but also reveal new truths about ourselves—especially about our core values. Using a recent trip to Paris and her experience earning a PhD as anchors, she delves into the personal and universal tension between work, achievement, and enjoyment (what she refers to as “eudaimonia”), ultimately encouraging listeners to understand and honor their unique value systems without judgment.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Backstory: From Loss to Purpose

Transition after Loss: Suzy recounts the period after her husband Jack’s death, when she felt lost and disengaged in upstate New York. An invitation to appear on the Today Show catalyzed her realization that she needed to return to meaningful work ([03:00]).
Birth of “Becoming You”: Inspired by her own search for purpose and her students’ uncertainties, Suzy conceptualized and began teaching the “Becoming You” class at NYU Stern. The class quickly gained popularity, especially in the post-pandemic landscape when many were reassessing their life choices ([04:30]).

2. Confronting Expertise and Impostor Syndrome

Values Teaching Doubts: Despite initial success, Suzy felt she knew “just enough more than her students” about values, likening it to being assigned to teach tennis as a camp counselor with little actual skill—“You just have to be better than the campers” ([07:10]).
Pursuit of Deep Knowledge: Prompted by her scholar best friend, Suzy pursued (and eventually obtained) a PhD from the University of Bristol in values expression. She describes the process as “the hardest intellectual thing I’ve ever done in my life,” dwarfing even her MBA ([09:10]).

“There was nothing, nothing that compares to the intellectual torture of getting my PhD...” (Suzy, [09:15])
Struggle and Triumph: Suzy shares about her repeated thesis rewrites and moments of near-defeat, only to be encouraged (or “kicked in the butt in a very polite British way”) by her advisors. The joy upon final acceptance brought her to tears ([11:15]).

3. The “Values Bridge” and Its Impact

Suzy’s research during her doctorate led to the creation of the “Welch Bristol Values Inventory” and the “Values Bridge,” now foundational tools for her work and teaching.

“It made me the professor my students deserved. They were putting so much trust in me, and... it just refined and elevated everything I was doing.” ([12:50])

4. The Paris Epiphany: Grappling with Enjoyment (Eudaimonia)

Paris as Celebration: To celebrate her PhD graduation, Suzy and some family members traveled to Paris before heading to Bristol. She describes feeling oddly melancholy despite the celebratory circumstances, especially as her family members split off to pursue their interests ([13:20]).
The Challenge of Enjoyment: Alone on Île de la Cité, she had to coax herself (and eventually her daughter, Sophia) into joining her at an outdoor café for oysters and champagne. She confesses to feeling almost alienated by the concept of sitting and enjoying life for its own sake ([14:00]).

“I can’t believe people do this, like, all the time... I can’t believe people go on vacations and, like, have fun.” (Suzy, [14:20], retold by Sophia)
Phone Call with Sophia: In a candid on-air call, Sophia describes Suzy’s shock at experiencing simple pleasure:

“You were... in a state of shock because you had just been enjoying yourself.... I think part of you is definitely uncomfortable with it, with having fun.” (Sophia, [14:06])

5. Values in Daily Life: Work vs. Enjoyment

Eudaimonia and Generational Shifts: Suzy notes that while “eudaimonia” (self-care, leisure, enjoyment) is a top life value for most people, it ranks almost last in her personal set. This, she observes, differs radically by generation, with younger generations (like Gen Z and her own children) prioritizing it far more ([16:20]).

“I have never enjoyed enjoyment. I am like a working girl. When I was three years old, I saw people with briefcases and I thought, I want one of those.” ([17:20])
Alignment in Relationships: She reflects fondly on finding alignment in values with Jack (“We left our honeymoon early because we weren’t working—we were bored!”) and discusses how divergent values can lead to relationship friction ([18:30]).

“If he had high eudaimonia and I had low, but we were both the same that work was, you know, work is fun, but eudaimonia is different...” ([17:50])
Travel as Values Discovery: She posits that travel uniquely illuminates our values—do we prefer beach relaxation, bustling sightseeing, or purposeful volunteering?—and that talking about values openly prevents misunderstanding and judgment ([19:10]).

6. Living Without Judgment

Embracing Differences: Suzy advocates for making peace with one’s unique value priorities—whether achievement, work, or eudaimonia—and for resisting the societal urge to prescribe what others “should” value.

“I don’t think we should tell people how to organize their lives. I don’t think we should judge each other. I think we should live our values freely and fully and authentically.” ([20:32])
Practical Takeaway: She encourages listeners to use resources like the “Values Bridge” (valuesbridge.com) to clarify their own and others’ value structures, especially if friction arises in relationships or at work ([19:40]).

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Self-Discovery:

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” (Marcel Proust, cited by Suzy, [01:10])
On Impostor Syndrome:

“I knew about values. I just knew about it a little bit more than my students. That wasn’t cool to me because I took being a professor really seriously.” ([07:25])
On Getting a PhD:

“I wept from exhaustion, and I wept from joy.” ([11:47])
On Enjoyment:

“Eudaimonia is when you pause and when you do stuff that just feels really good. And I’m just not in that business. I don’t do it.” ([17:35])
On Values Alignment:

“All you have to do is just understand that your choices around these things have consequences. And that’s fine if you can accept that.” ([19:30])
On Judgment:

“I’m going to start a low Eudaimonia pride club... but I’ve been told by people my whole life to stop working and have fun.” ([20:00])

Key Timestamps

[01:10] – Sets up the “new eyes” theme with Proust’s quote.
[03:00] – Describes her lost period following her husband’s death.
[04:30] – Talks about creation and impact of the “Becoming You” course.
[07:10] – Compares early teaching of values to being an unqualified tennis instructor.
[09:10] – Begins PhD journey, prompted by best friend.
[11:15] – Emotional discussion of finishing the PhD.
[12:50] – Creation and significance of the “Values Bridge.”
[13:20] – Pre-graduation trip to Paris, Notre Dame visit.
[14:00] – Experiences discomfort at enjoying leisure in Paris café; phone call with Sophia.
[16:20] – Discusses generational and personal differences in valuing enjoyment.
[17:50] – On values compatibility in marriage.
[19:10] – Travel as a mirror to personal values.
[19:40] – Recommendations: take the Values Bridge assessment.
[20:32] – Final word on embracing value differences and avoiding judgment.

Conclusion and Takeaways

Suzy Welch’s exploration of values through the lens of personal travel, professional transformation, and everyday choices highlights a core message: Authenticity means understanding and owning what you value, even if it’s not what the world expects. Whether it’s enjoying oysters in Paris, diving into work, or taking time for self-care, the key is to live your life by your unique compass—without judging others for following theirs.

Transcript

A (0:00)

Stockholm. Now I never wanna go home.

B (0:12)

Okay, there it is for the third and final time, the Stockholm song, which has been the theme music these last couple of weeks for our travel series on the Becoming youg Podcast, our travel series about going far away to come back home and up close and very personal with yourself. And not just yourself, with your values. Hello. Hi, this is Susie Welch. I'm an author, I'm a researcher and a professor at nyu, and your deeply devoted host. And this is the Becoming youg Podcast, in which every week we ask the question, hey, what the heck are you doing with your life? And why are you doing that? And are you sure it's the right thing? Because we want to know. We want to know. We really do. Because living a life of purpose is a really beautiful thing. It's beautiful. It's hard to do. It's hard. It's so hard. It's the work of our life. You have to fight for it. You know, like the old Beastie Boy song used to say, you have to fight for your right to party. You really have to fight for your right to live authentically and with meaning and purpose. But that is what we are here for on the becoming you pod. And that leads me one last time to this quote that Marcel Proust said back. I don't know, 1900. The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. Yeah. So in the first episode of this series, I talked about a trip I took to the Taj Mahal with my husband in 2005, and how that really upended my understanding of the value of romantic love, which we call belovedness in becoming universe. Then last week, we went to Sicily for a little sob fest, and I talked about how unearthing a very suppressed family secret blew open my understanding of the value of scope and how that has really played out in my life and just changed my life, really. And this week we are traveling to. Well, let us take a listen. That song, by the way, is called Paris in Spring. And that is almost exactly. You knew it was Paris, right? Is almost exactly when this story occurred in 2025, just a few months ago. But it was actually more like summer. In fact, it was July 11th, I believe. Okay, so fully. So fully summer. Paris in summer. All right, so here's a story about what happened in Paris on. In July last year, in 2021, a year after my husband died, I was kind of. I mean, I was not kind of. I was completely lost, and I was fading into oblivion in upstate New York, walking my Dogs, day in and day out, trying to figure out what I was going to do next with my. My life. And the family was beginning to go back. The family had been living with me up there while we were all kind of living through the pandemic and recovering from Jack's passing. And the family was beginning to get a little worried because mom seemed to be kind of lost and walking the dogs kind of a scary amount. And right in that period, I got asked to come back on the Today show on the third hour with Jenna and Hoda and I. I walked into the studio, and this incredible, beautiful Godsent eureka dawned on me, which was. Hiding up in the woods was not the answer. I needed to get back to work. And I loved the Today show and still love going on, but that was not the work I wanted to continue doing with my life. And I had at that time, an idea for a class which was to become Becoming you. I brought it to NYU Stern. The dean said, well, this sounds kind of interesting. I wish I had taken a class that helped me figure out what to do with my life when I was in business school. And I said, so to do. I wish I'd taken this class. And so one thing led to another, and I started teaching Becoming you at Stern. And it was. My timing was immaculate, as I like to say, because I was teaching a class about how to figure out what to do with your life as people were coming out of the pandemic. And I also happened to be teaching it to people who are in graduate school, which we all know people go to graduate school when they don't know what to do with their life. So the class took off. I ended up writing the book Becoming you, which I highly recommend, by the way. And I started teaching Becoming you on the NYU campus to people who don't go to nyu and open enrollment. And it grew, its footprint grew. Thousands of people have taken it now to the point where we are now certifying coaches and so forth. But I have to tell you a really important thing that happened in the midst of all of this growth. I started to really dig down into what I was teaching. And I was teaching a lot about values. And I thought. I mean, I was trying to research as much as I could about what I was teaching around values, and. And students were getting a lot out of it. But it was not lost on me that I did not know as much as I should about values. There was a gigantic scholarly field about what values were that was hundreds of years old. And I was too surface level for My own comfort. And very early on, maybe four or five months in, I really remember feeling very convicted that I was not knowledgeable enough to be teaching students in the way I was. And in fact, it brought back a memory to me, a memory of when I was went to go work at a summer camp in my late teens. Okay, it was my first year in college. I went to go work at a summer camp. I went to work at the summer camp because my very cute boyfriend was working at the boys version of the girls camp. And I arrived there, and the head of the camp said, well, we're going to have you teach tennis. And I said, I don't know how to. I don't know how to play tennis very well. And she said, you just have to be better than the campers. And that's what it felt like in my classroom. I knew about values. I just knew about it a little bit more than my students. That wasn't cool to me because I took being a professor really seriously. I thought, that's it. I'm going to be a professor for the rest of my days. I love it. And it was going really well. And it still is. Thanks. Thanks to so many wonderful people at Stern. So very early on, right in this process, my best friend was over visiting from England. She happens to be a lifelong scholar. She's a very esteemed scholar. She has two PhDs. She's the vice chancellor of the University of Bristol. She's a fancy scholar. And I was bitching and moaning about this to her. And I said to her, I'm doing research that's PhD worthy. I've got to learn more. And she basically, in her crisp British accent, said to me, you just stop complaining. Go get your PhD. And I said, I don't know how to do that. And she really walked me through the process. And she said, if we promise to not speak to each other for two years, why don't you apply to the University of Bristol? Because we obviously had to keep it very clean. And I ended up applying and getting into the University of Bristol's PhD program. And I entered into a tunnel like no other. And I've talked about it on this podcast before. The hardest intellectual thing I've ever done in my life was get my PhD in values expression. I have gone to school. I've gone to very good schools. I've gotten my master's, I've got my mba. But there was nothing, nothing that compares to the intellectual torture of getting my PhD, of digging deep into this field that's old and Rich and nuanced and reading every academic, academic paper, every scholarly thing that's ever been written about values and just bathing in it and unpacking it. And there were times, so many times where I was going to bail and I would call or write my thesis advisors, they were long suffering my thesis advisors. And I would say, I can't do it. Your girl has gone as far as she can go. And they, occasionally they'd kick my butt in very polite British way, by the way, or they would be very encouraging. And there were many times, I mean, when I wrote my thesis over again for like the 13th time because they kept on making me go back to the well and do more. When I handed it in, I'm not getting like the 9th or 11th or 12th, 13th time, I said to my thesis advisor, Graham Abbey, I said to him, if this isn't right, I'm done. I, I've tried as hard as I can. And I was doing this like, look, I'm teaching full time, I'm running, becoming U Labs. And so I was doing it like at midnight and five in the morning and sometimes I wake up at three because the house was quiet and I'd work on my thesis then I'm in my research then. And when I sent this like final version and I said to Graham, abby, if this isn't it, I, I'm done. I've reached the end. I, I have failed. I cann it. And I like waited and waited for the email back and I got an email back from him and my other very smart thesis advisor and they said, susie, this is it. And I sat at my desk and I wept. I wept from exhaustion and I wept from joy. I was so proud. And that was just the beginning because then you have to revise your thesis and then you have to go through the firing squad, oops, I mean the examining group. And I went before my examiners. That was a, a day that will live in infamy. But I, I passed. And it was joyous and it was unbelievable that I finally did it. And it made me such a better teacher. It changed the values bridge. It created the values bridge, it created the Welch Bristol Values Inventory. That's why the whole system of becoming you is based on something called the Welch Bristol Values Inventory. Out of gratitude to this university that walked me through all of this. And I named my inventory after them and because that's where the research happened and the values bridges, because of all of this happened, it made me the professor I wanted to be. It made me the professor My students deserved. They were putting so much trust in me, and they were. It just refined and elevated everything I was doing. Okay, moment of truth. Time to get my PhD. Time to walk across the stage, get my PhD handed to me, and put on the floppy velvet hat which every PhD wears. Oh, my God. This was the big day. And so it was happening in the middle of July last year, and I was. You know, some people skipped their graduations. You got to believe. I was not skipping this graduation. No way. So I asked my family, who wants to come watch me? And unfortunately, my oldest kids could not come because of the baby was too young. And Eve could not come because of her own work. But the very dutiful Marcus and Eva, my son and his wife, came, and also my daughter Sophia, who, if you've been with this podcast for a while, you've heard Sophia, as we often call on Sophia because she's the big truth teller, and. And she's funny and hilarious and wonderful. So to sweeten the experience, because, you know, it's not like my kids were jumping out of their skin with joy to come to a graduation in Bristol, England, in the middle of July. They all have lives and do their own thing. I said, why don't we go to Paris for two days before we go down to Bristol for my graduation? And this, of course, immediately made everyone very happy. You know, I'm not going to say they were as motivated as I was to go see the renovation at Notre Dame. I mean, I was obsessed. If there was one thing we were going to do, I'm a very faithful person. Cosmos is my number one value. And I was like, the first thing we're doing there is we're going to go get a tour of the renovated Notre Dame. I mean, remember Notre Dame burnt? And it was renovated in a way. I highly recommend you doing this, by the way, no matter if you're faithful or not. What they did to save Notre Dame is a magnificent testament to the human spirit and will. So, anyway, we got to Paris, we went to Notre Dame. It was a very moving experience. But then everybody kind of wanted to split up. Marcus and Eva wanted to go look at antiques, and Sophia wanted to go watch the US Open back in the hotel room because she's a tennis fanatic. And that left me alone in Paris for a few hours. And now, because I'm a widow, I'm alone more than you would think. Okay, I've got my dogs. But, like, when the weekend comes, I mean, I usually see a friend here and a friend there, but I'm usually kind of walking around with my dogs, and I'm kind of. I'm used to being alone. There was some tenderness in my heart about being alone in Paris, which was a city jacket and I loved and went to all the time, so I missed him. And so I decided to walk around my favorite parts of Paris without Jack. Yeah, I did that. I did that. So I walked around for a few hours. I started to get a little melancholy, and I thought, what the heck is wrong with you? You should be having fun. You're walking around Paris. And I thought, okay, this is. This is not feeling all good and fuzzy inside. I think what I really want to do is I saw this beautiful little bar, outdoor cafe on Ile de Cite, which is, to my mind, the prettiest part of Paris. It's the island in the middle of the Seine. And I want to sit there, and I want to have a glass of champagne, and I want to have some oysters. Now, I think you've heard me say many of you that I'm a vegan. And maybe you're thinking, oh, how can a vegan have oysters? And I'm sorry, if you're going to be grossed out. You can just, like, jump over this part. But my. My rule with veganism is that I don't eat anything that suffers, and oysters don't have central nervous system, okay? So sorry. Not sorry. But that's why I eat oysters or also. Also eat clams, okay? And they're delicious, by the way. So I wanted to sit on at this little outdoor cafe, and I wanted to have champagne and oysters. I wanted to, like, just be so overjoyed that I was there getting my PhD and that I was healthy and my kids were with me, and this was the. I. I had this incredible achievement, and I wanted just to. Okay, I want to be very blunt. I, like, wanted to have a good time. I wanted to have enjoyment. I wanted to feel the sweetness of life. I had done my hard work walking all around Notre Dame, peppering the guide with questions about, like, all sorts of things, you know, kind of history nerd. And I thought, I just want to have a moment where I relax and kick back. And then I thought, I just can't bring myself to go sit alone in that bar. I just can't do it. I just. So I got on the phone with Sophia, and I begged her to leave the US Open in her hotel room. I begged her, and I said, please come down and have champagne and oysters with me at this absolutely Charming bar. Let's just do it. And she kind of was like, I don't want to come. And I pleaded with her. I might have bribed her. And I want to pause here, because I want to call Sophia right now. She is in la, and I want her to describe what happened at that moment.