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- [00:01]
Mark Manson
Evening.
- [00:02]
Susie Welch
Buyer's remorse. Buy a new car. I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana.
- [00:11]
Dr. Pam King
You what?
- [00:11]
Susie Welch
Yeah.
- [00:12]
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Great price.
- [00:13]
IXL Advertiser
I even have seven days to love
- [00:14]
Susie Welch
it or return it. So there's no. No, no buyer's remorse. More like buyers rejoice. I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana.
- [00:27]
Squarespace Advertiser
Limitations and exclusions May apply.
- [00:28]
Susie Welch
See our 7 day return policy@carvana.com Imagine
- [00:31]
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- [01:29]
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- [01:57]
Susie Welch
Have you ever found yourself at the receiving end of a question that you kinda sorta can answer, like you know, 70, 80% of the answer, but you're like wavering on the last 20 or 30% and so you wing it and you're looking at the face of the person you're talking to to see how it's going? Yeah, me too. So I am going to ask you one of those questions right now. I am. So brace yourself and get ready to wiggle and score. Maybe. What are values? Not what are your values, we're going to get to that. But what even are values? Hi, I'm Susie Welch and I am so happy to say your, um, days are over. They are over. Because with this episode of Becoming youg, we are going exactly there this week. You're gonna finish this episode knowing exactly what values mean. It's so important. It's always been important. It's probably more important than ever. Cause we. People talk about them constantly. And I have research, actual true academic research, that shows that only 17% of people actually know what values are, and only 7% know what their own values are. So, as I said, I am Susie Welch. I'm a professor at NYU Stern School of Business, where I teach a class called Becoming youg. Becoming youg is a methodology, 21 parts to it, that helps you figure out what to do with your life. And it does that by excavating three data sets. Your interests, your aptitudes. And last but not least, the topic of today's podcast, your values. I have to tell you something. A confession before we get going with this podcast today, which I'm so freaking excited about. I used to be a value skeptic. I was. This was back when I was in business school in 1986, and I thought everyone basically had the same values in this world. I didn't understand what all the values brouhaha was about. Like, why was everybody was talking about values and debating them. What was all the. Everyone had the same values. And it actually took me decades to become a values scholar, as I am today. And yes, there is such a thing as a value scholar. I know because technically, I am one, having written my thesis, my PhD thesis on values expression. And even more than that, because I'm actually the inventor of something called the Welch Bristol Values Inventory, which is the list of the 16 values that I think humans hold. And it was the subject of that same said PhD thesis. So those are my bonafides for what lies ahead today, our time together talking about what even are values. So here's what's going to happen. Actually, let me be more specific. First, I'm not going to make you wait to hear what values are. I'm actually going to define them for you in a second. Stand by. But then, for the fun of it, we're going to listen together to other people, talk about values. And I'm going to react. Look, we have Ellen DeGeneres, and we have Jay Shetty and Matthew McConaughey, among others. I'm going to listen along with you. And then I'm going to opine. And sometimes I'm going to opine calmly, and sometimes I'm going to opine less calmly. Somewhere in there, you're gonna hear me give you an exercise to figure out what your values are, which you can actually do when you finally know what values are in the first place. All this and more and more in less than an hour. So thank God I talk this fast, but I'm gonna slow down for this before we launch in. And that is a definition of values. Here I go. Values are the deeply held beliefs and principles that galvanize, that is, drive, our actions and decisions. They are not virtues, social and cultural constructs that we all agree are good, like honesty and compassion. No. Values are choices about how we live, work, and play. They're formed by the time we're in our early 20s, although they can change with a seismic event. I'll talk more about that later. And last but not least, almost no one really knows what their values are in rank order until they've done some serious excavating. But the good news is, that's what becoming you is all about. So let's just hang out together forever. Okay, so let's get started right now with this very, very full show, values, that is going to get you to a place that next time someone starts talking about values, you will say, I'll take it from here. Let's get going. First up, we're going to listen together to Mark Manson. He's talking about what he's calling the six characteristics of values. In case you're not familiar with Mark, he's the author of the huge New York Times bestseller, the Subtle Art of Not Giving an F Word. And this video that you're about to hear has 365,000 views. So let's see if he's giving people correct information about values.
- [06:02]
Mark Manson
There are really six key characteristics of a value that I think separate it from maybe other things that you might think or feel throughout your life. So the first one is that they're linked with emotion. Values are inherently very emotional things because by definition, they are the things that you consider to be the most important in your life. If you think about, I don't know, protesters, right? Protesters are never really chill. They're. There's a lot of emotion going on at a protest, or if you think about somebody who. Who is wronged you in some way, like, obviously your. Your emotional reaction is an intense amount of anger. That's because a value of yours has just been violated by somebody. So that's the first one.
- [06:41]
Susie Welch
This is very good. I have some pushback to it. All right, number one, he says that values are linked to emotion. They definitely Are they are depending on if you're an emotional person, but generally you hold these principles, these organizing principles of your life so dearly that they do express themselves with some level of emotionality more for some people rather than others.
- [06:59]
Mark Manson
Second, that they motivate action. Generally, they are not only the thing that define what you want to pursue in your life, but they also drive the energy behind that pursuit as well. So if you value status and acclaim, not only will it help decide what the goals are that you want to pursue in your life are, but it will help get you up in the morning, get you excited about the opportunities and the potential that you can experience.
- [07:27]
Susie Welch
Number two, they absolutely motivate action. I say to my students that values are the deeply held beliefs and principles that galvanize actions and decisions. So absolutely down on that.
- [07:37]
Mark Manson
The third one is that they apply across context. So Schwartz actually has a great term that I really like, situational, which means that basically they maintain their importance and relevance across contexts. So if you value honesty, it means you value honesty at work, you value honesty in your relationships, you value honesty with your friendships, you value honesty with your family. And there's no situation where you're like, oh, well, no, I don't really care about honesty here. If it's a value, it's a value no matter where you are, what you're doing, who you're with.
- [08:09]
Susie Welch
I mean, this is very good. I wanna make one point clear, and that is possible that he made in the clip that we didn't show you, which is much of what he's saying comes from the great scholarship of Shalom Schwartz, who is the grandfather of values in academia. And he's at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He wrote the Schwartz values inventory in 1990. The name Shalom Schwartz is mentioned in my own Ph.D. thes around 500 times. Because you can't write about values and not mention Shalom Schwartz. He wrote this great values inventory. He revised it like nine times. And he created the Schwartz Values Test assessment, which I am grateful to him because there, there were parts of it that I, that I didn't love. And it is what actually drove me to create the, the values bridge. I felt like there were things that were left out of that, like that great test. Okay, so he's a great scholar. And that is what we're hearing Mark talk about. They apply across context, full stop. Absolutely, yes. Your values do not change in context. My students are always asking me and people are always asking me, do your values change over time? Do your values change when you have this, you know, like when you're at home, do you have different values at work and home? They generally don't. Your values do not flip around like fish on a dock, if you will. Your values are pretty stable from age 25 on. What often it changes is your expression of them. Are you living your values or not? Are you living authentically or not? But your values are pretty stable. And so absolutely, they are stable across context. That's true. And if they're flipping around, I would take that up with my therapist. I think there's something going on with that. All right. I think it shows a little bit of instability, if you don't mind.
- [09:41]
Mark Manson
The fourth characteristic of your values is that they are often the standards by which you make moral judgments. So it's not just that we become emotional about our values. We tend to use them as the yardstick that we measure other people and we measure ourselves, right? So if I have a very strong value for, say, personal freedom, I will judge myself. I will measure myself by that value. I will measure myself. If I have a lot of freedom in my life, I will feel good about myself. If I have no freedom in my life, I will feel bad about myself. And similarly, I'll look at you and I'll say, man, Drew has all this freedom in his life. That guy's killing it. Or I'll say, man, Drew has no freedom going, he can't do anything. What a loser, right? It becomes the yardstick by which we measure progress, self worth, worth of others, et cetera, et cetera.
- [10:36]
Susie Welch
Standards when guiding moral judgments. That was the fourth thing he said. And then he went on to say something that is outrageously true, and I could not more strongly agree with it, is that once we have our own values, it's how we start judging stuff. We start judging how much we like a job, that's okay. We start judging how much we like a vacation, that's okay. What I don't like is when we start using our values to judge other people, because other people are not flawed versions of us. They are perfect versions of themselves. And in fact, one of the great things about knowing your values in gritty, grimy detail, knowing what they are, having a language for them, is that when somebody has a different value, instead of saying, that person's bad, they just don't believe in freedom or whatever, they don't believe in personal determination, self determination or whatever, we can just say, look, I value agency more than that person does. It doesn't make them worse than you. It makes them different from you. So we do use them to make moral judgments. I much rather have us all be in a world where we're a little bit agnostic, or a lot of it agnostic about other people's values. I mean some people, I mean, one of the number one values that people hold is in this day and age is a value we call eudaimonia. Joy, pleasure, the good life balance, personal flourishing. What feels good to you? It's self care, okay? By another word. And the reason why I use eudaimonia is because people get judgy. It's not one of my values, it's number 15 for me. That's how much fun I am. I just, I have other values, okay? Other things are prioritized for me. If I judged everybody who had eudaimonia as a top value, I'd have no friends. So I don't think we should be using moral judgment because, and this is really, really, really important, I cannot underscore it enough. Values are not virtues. Virtues are social and cultural constructs that we all agree are good. When he was talking, if you heard him say, if you value honesty in this situation, you're going to value honesty in that situation. And I tried to control my facial expressions while he was saying it because honesty is a virtue. We all agree more. Honesty is good, okay? So I don't consider honesty. I think I don't have that in my list of values. Values are choices. And that's why if we're making those choices for us and we have to live the consequences, why should we be judgy of people who have the different views value from us? If they're not hurting anybody, they're living the consequences of it. So it's true they are the standards guiding moral judgments. But I'd put an asterisk next to that saying, but should they be so
- [13:02]
Mark Manson
fifth characteristic, they tend to be ranked. We all have value hierarchies going on in our heads and in many ways it kind of defines who we are as a person and what we care about and why we make the decisions we make. And then finally, number six, they involve trade offs. To care deeply about one thing, you have to by definition not care about other things or devalue, say, the contradiction of the thing that you care about. So if I care deeply about personal freedom, then I'm probably going to care less about things like stability, consistency, routine, maybe commitments, because all of those things are constraints on personal freedom in certain contexts. And so if personal freedom is my highest value, then I'm probably going to Devalue those other things. They're going to be lower on my value hierarchy. Basically, values answer the question, what matters? What is worth pursuing and what kind of person do I want to become?
- [13:58]
Susie Welch
All right, the fifth one is, he says they're ranked in importance. Yes, they are. But we don't do it, okay? In our minds, we try to live all our values equally, all at the same time. And that's how we get ourselves into big kettle of muck, okay? It is like, you know, oh, I value family. We call that family centrism and our values inventory. And I value achievement. I want to succeed. I want to be. I want to be a big winner. I want to. I want to succeed, okay? And I value, say, affluence. I want to have wealth. Those are values that are in conflict. And we, we try to live them equally all the same time. But the facts are, as he makes this point, our values are ranked, ordered, and look, I mean, like, I'm just gonna say the values bridge. One of the best, greatest things that it delivers is it goes 1 through 16 and it doesn't let you squirm out of that. Your values are ranked and that is exactly to his sixth point, that they involve trade offs. You've got to face into the fact that when you know your values and you speak about them with specificity and you really are living them, you're going to make trade offs. Nobody gets to do it all, all at the same time, exactly as much as they want. Okay? Maybe somebody does. If you are that person, please be in contact with me. I mean, it's very rare. Only 1% of the population, according to our research, are people who are l living all their values as much as they want to be living. 1% of the population. And we have so much data, so I feel very confident in that number. Then there's sort of a chunk of 30 people who are living them, sort of 10 to 20% living their lives almost completely according to the values. But the big bump, about 50% of the population is between 30, 40, 50% not fully living all their values. They're making trade offs or they haven't figured out how to live completely authentically. To summarize, I think that this is very legitimate way to talk about values. I agree in principle with everything. It is, I think, think most of this is coming from Shalom Schwartz, the father of the field that I'm in and a great scholar. He probably doesn't know I exist. In fact, I'm going to put a large bet on the Fact, he doesn't know I exist. I'm a minor, minor, minor scholar in this field. These ideas are coming mainly from his scholarship, and I think that they're true. The thing that he says here is this is what values are. But he doesn't, as most people don't say, here's how to figure out what your values are. And part of the work of becoming you and the becoming you methodology is it looks. We talk about values in the becoming you methodology because we want to help you go someplace. We want you to go figure out your purpose or help you figure out your purpose if you desire. It's not enough to know what values are. The next step is to know what your values are. And that's what we're all about. I mean, I love people to know what values are because I spend, I'll spend a huge amount of my time talking to people about the difference between values and virtues and values and identity and values and personality. God, I wish that in fifth grade instead of teaching recorder, I wish that they taught what values were. Oh my God, it would just. Life would be a lot better in conversations and I think there'd be world peace. I honestly think it's about, you know, as Wittgenstein said, the limits of my language are the limits of my world. And if we had words for our values, I think a lot of better conversations would happen earlier. So no shade on the recorder teachers of the world, but somewhere, literally, fifth, sixth, seventh grade, what your what values are should be taught. And then eventually what your own values should are should be started. Talking about ninth grade, I think that this is a very, very robust descript description of what values are. So no hysteria for me on this one.
- [17:24]
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- [17:54]
Dr. Pam King
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- [18:52]
Susie Welch
you get your podcasts. All right, next up, we're going to hear from a pretty controversial figure. Ellen DeGeneres and her take on values. Her bold, bold take on values. This video is from years and years ago, and I'm hearing it for the first time, like you. So let's see if I agree with her or not.
- [19:07]
Ellen DeGeneres
I usually don't talk about stuff like this on my show, but I really want to thank everyone who is supporting me. And if you don't know me very well, if you're just watching maybe for the first time or you're just getting to know me, I want to be clear. And here are the values that I stand for. I stand for honesty, equality, kindness, compassion, treating people the way you want to be treated and helping those in need. To me, those are traditional values. That's what I stand for.
- [19:31]
Susie Welch
Uh, okay. This weekend I was in an event, and somewhere in the middle of the event, I was with a bunch of couples, great couples, and we were. I was working with them, actually, and doing, becoming us. And at one point, I used the term virtue signaling. And surprisingly to me, one of the people, one of the couples had never heard this word virtue signaling before. And if you've not heard it, let me introduce you to it. Virtue signaling is when you go through the motions of making sure everybody knows what a good person you are. And this is Ellen DeGeneres, who actually, you know, the truth came out about her and that she wasn't all that nice a person, and she went off to the Cotswolds to flip yet another house. But I would say that look what she's doing here. She's virtue signaling. And she's doing it in a way, in a particular way that makes a person who studies values lose their everlasting mind. Because what she's saying is here, the values, that's the word she said that I stand for. And then she just listed virtues. And you know what? Here's the thing about virtues. You've heard me say it before. I'm gonna say it again. I'm sorry. Put it on my gravestone. I'm gonna say it. So many Times, virtues are cultural and social constructs that everybody agrees are good. So she stands for stuff. You're right. Yeah, she's right. Those are traditional V word. But the V word is virtues. All right, There's a great scholar, you've heard of him? Jonathan Haidt. He's another professor at NYU Stern School of Business, where I teach. He teaches business and society. Teaches ethics. He teaches about the virtues. He's a scholar of virtues. Honesty, decency, kindness, justice. Treating others as you treat yourself, you know, as you would want be treated. I don't want to know you if you don't have those as things that you care about. These are what hold us together as a society. Virtues. So to stand up and say that your quote unquote values are virtues, it's important, okay? Because then they start getting mixed up with what values really are, which are choices, which we actually have optionality around. There's a value called scope. It's how big or small a life you want. On the one end of the continuum, you want a high scope life. Action, excitement, learning, adventure, meeting a lot of people, stimulation. Okay? You want to be Bianca Jagger riding into the studio 54 on the back of a white stallion. The highest scope person I ever knew was my late husband Jack, who when we'd get into bed at night, it would not be past him to look over at me and say, want to go on a pub crawl at 12 o' clock at night? Because his day had not been exciting enough. Okay, there, you know, high school people. I'm a high scope person. I was in his high scope as he was. They will give up the feelings of visibility and certainty and predictability for stimulation. At the other end of the continuum of lower scope, no better or worse. Can I be more clear? They don't want to have unpredictability. They want predictability. They want psychological safety. Sometimes they want physical safety. They want to know what next Thursday is going to look like. They don't like that feeling in their stomach when they don't know what's happening. I recently went on a trip with a group of people. One of the people doesn't like to fly. She frankly doesn't like to travel. She was with a bunch of high scope people. She was in kind of discomfort the entire. And I saw with my own eyes the value of scope playing out. How much stimulation and activity and action and unpredictability and spontaneity do you want in your life versus at the other end how much psychological safety and predictability and you could be somewhere Dead center. Okay? It's a continuum. That's a value. It's a choice. You shouldn't hate me for having high scope, and I shouldn't hate you for having lower scope. I mean, when I went to Europe a year ago or so to pick up my PhD, I wanted to plan the most exciting trip ever with my family coming along with me to watch me get my diplomas. I went across the stage. They wanted to get a little in. Speaking of the Cotswolds, they wanted to stay a little in in the Cotswolds the whole time and play, like, bocce in the backyard. Okay. And I was like, this is where my high scope is bumping into your low scope. Did I get mad about it for a minute. And then I thought, I love them, and I'm gonna meet them in the middle. And we did some of my high scope stuff, but mostly their low scope stuff. Let's take another value. Again, a choice. And I'm gonna pick one that's more controversial. I'm gonna pick one that people often say is a vir. It family centrism. And this is how much you want family to be the organizing principle of your life. Now, in many cultures, family comes first. That's what it said. And it said it's a virtue. People have lost relationships, lost marriages, lost friendships over this fight about whether families and organizing principles is a choice or an obligation. And I want to say that family centrism in this and whether or not family is the first screen through which you put every decision is actually a choice. But because should everybody have children? Some people say, no, I don't want them. Some people say, yes, absolutely. My values inventory says that family centrism, the desire, the motivation to have family as the organizing principle of your life, if you're not hurting anybody. Some people want every day to be organized around their family. Every decision is made through the screen of family considerations. And other people, they don't want to have a family, or they have a very small family of origin, or they want to be a monk in the hymnal Himalayas. Okay, Is that wrong if that's their desire? If you're not hurting anyone, I would say family centrism is actually a value. Now, there's other ones that are like scope that are very clearly not, you know, on that sort of controversial borderline. But in general, the 16 values are choices. Whereas what Ellen DeGeneres just stood up there, said, let me tell you what I stand for. And that's fine. That part of what she said was absolutely Fine, let me tell you what I stand for. And then she should have said, I believe in these virtues just like you do, and could have listed them. That is what I would say about this, this clip. And I believe in those virtues exactly like she did. But I don't believe their choices. I think everyone should have them. And I frankly don't really want to know you if you don't. All right, now we're going to listen to a series of famous people talking about values. Matthew McConaughey asked a group of his celebrity pals to share what values their parents had passed down to them. And I'm going to take a wild guess that these might not exactly be values, but we'll see. I'm going to respond to the foodie extraordinaire, Guy Fieri and the actress Michelle Mat Monaghan. You might know her from Mission Impossible, among other things. And I'm going to respond to the author and speaker Jay Shetty, the actor Chris Pratt, Gary V. And also Mario Lopez for the TV host. And then Matthew McConaughey himself. So my buddy Matthew McConaughey reached out and says, can you make a quick video talking about the values that your dad gave you as a kid, which you passed on to your kids? And I got a good one. When I was a kid, my dad used to quote Kenny Rogers, and he said, you got to know when to hold him, and you got to know when to fold them. You got to know when to hold them. You got to know when to fold them. This is not a value. This is life advice. I think it's life advice about cutting your losses. And by the way, I actually think that's an incredible life skill. And I would make the case that the most successful people I know have been people who've, like, known when to, like, get over to the sunk costs of in a relationship or at work, and they've known when to hold them and what. Known when to fold them. So, yeah, but that's not values. That's just. Just pure on life advice about how to conduct yourself. So I'm not going to have that on the values list. It's just good advice to be kind,
- [26:34]
International Animal Rescue / Children's Miracle Network Announcer
to lend a hand, to be of service. My folks were extraordinary examples of that growing up.
- [26:41]
Susie Welch
I want to unpick this one a little bit, okay. Because it starts sounding like platitudes. She says to be kind, to lend a hand. These are virtues. But then she goes a little bit further, and she says to be of service. Service. How much you want to organize your life around helping other people is actually a value. It's a choice. We call it non sibi. That's the Latin word for not for oneself. And guess what? There is this virtue. There is a true virtue of altruism. If you are walking down the street and an elderly person falls right in front of you. This actually happened to me the other day. I was walking down Park Avenue and there was an elderly couple walking in the opposite direction. And we were crossing, I think it was like 72nd. And the husband tripped and he fell right down next to me. This is not a choice. I'm sorry. It's not a choice. I ran over to them. I first helped. The wife was bending down to get him. I helped her up. I, like, put my hand up to stop traffic. I mean, I did anything. Any normal. I'm not virtue signaling here. I just did what any normal person, any person with any fiber of moral being would do. I helped the husband up. I asked if they wanted me to call 911. I got them to the corner. By that time, a doctor who just come out of Lenox Hill came over. We were acting like normal people who have the virtue issue of helping other people. Altruism. Okay, does this mean that I want to organize my life around individual acts of service? That I. I'm in HR or I'm a pediatric nurse or a person whose day and night and career is organized around helping other people? Yes or no? It, like, don't judge me if I'm not hurting anybody and my life is. Is around something else entirely. But I am there when I. I am needed. In terms of altruism, it's something different. Okay? This idea about how you organize your life. Do you on the weekends go windsurfing or do you go volunteer in a soup kitchen? We don't hold it against the people who are windsurfing generally. I mean, unless we are very judgy people, this is a choice how we wanna organize our lives. So I would say the first two things. She said, absolutely. They are virtues. The last one, I'm gonna push back and say, be of service. Service. That's a choice. That's a choice. Be there when you're needed. Be there when somebody falls down in front of you. If you're driving down the highway and you see a mother with her kids and their car is smoking, for God's sake, pull over, okay? And call 91 1. That is not organizing your life around acts of service. That's a values judgment that affects what you do day in and day Out. So pushing back on that one.
- [28:59]
Jay Shetty
My parents always wanted me to be empathetic, be compassionate towards others. Needs to be selfless and think about what I could do to serve others.
- [29:09]
Susie Welch
Okay, there we go again. Empathy, wonderful personality trait. And actually not just a personality trait, but actually kind of an aptitude. And everybody should have more empathy. I think. It's not a choice. Then we go on to compassion. That's another really good thing to be. And people who are not compassionate are jerks. And our culture generally agrees that. And we don't like people who are not compassionate. But then the third thing he says is just like what we heard before is to be selfless and to devote your life to acts of service. Yay for the people who do it. They have very high non sibi, but it's not for everyone because they're not cut out for it. And if they're not hurting anyone, should they be required to organize their lives around acts of service? Not everybody's choices are going to be our choices. Yes, be empathetic. Yes, be compassionate. Organize your life around acts of service.
- [29:57]
Ellen DeGeneres
Choice, humor, laughter truly is the best medicine.
- [30:01]
Susie Welch
We face a lot of tough seasons
- [30:02]
Ellen DeGeneres
as a family, but we laughed, man, we laughed through it all.
- [30:08]
Susie Welch
Humorous personality trait. You know, you can like it or not like it. I mean, one of the things I love the most about Jack was he had a great sense of humor. It matters to some people. It's definitely not a value because some people just can't be funny. But I would just say it's a wonderful thing. It's a personality trait, and sometimes it's actually an aptitude, but it's not a value.
- [30:26]
Mark Manson
Empathy for others is the ultimate strength,
- [30:29]
Susie Welch
not a sign of. Of soft. And I think the world is going
- [30:35]
Mark Manson
to start understanding the soft is actually the hard.
- [30:38]
Susie Welch
I love Gary Ve. I agree with almost everything he says in. In this world. I met Gary Vee for the first time in 2007. Okay, he. He was running a wine store back then. He's an amazing person. Empathy is not a value. It's a virtue. And it's something that we should all have more of.
- [30:52]
Mark Manson
I'm a child of immigrants, and their whole mantra that I try to pass
- [30:56]
Susie Welch
along to my children is to work hard, stay focused, and do the right
- [30:59]
Mark Manson
thing, and the right things will happen for you.
- [31:01]
Susie Welch
All right, so this is life advice, but let's talk about one thing he said, because it's one of these lightning rod values. Work hard. All right? So work centrism, as we call it, in the values Bridge and the Welsh Bristol Values Inventory that undergirds the values Bridge. Work centrism is a value. It's our desire for how much we want to organize our lives around work. And guess what? It's a pretty low value for most people. I mean, it happens to be one of my, my top values generationally. It tends to be excused with older people. Gen Z has work centrism and as a peripheral value down in the bottom five. And it doesn't mean that they don't want to succeed, and it doesn't mean they don't want to have affluence. They just do not want to get up in the morning and organize their lives around work. And maybe they're right, and maybe that's the right way to do it. But you know what? I think they're going to have to live the consequences of it. And so it should be their choice. And I don't want to force everybody to work hard. I. I don't want to judge anybody, and I don't want to be judged. Like, I don't want to be called a workaholic for loving work. And so I'm not going to judge anybody who wants to work less than I do. So what he says right there, you know, work hard, that is a value that many families and many immigrant families. My own family was an immigrant family. I'm sure I was told to work hard. I just watch my parents, especially my mom, working hard. But it's a choice, and some people choose not to do it. And we judge them, don't we? It's a value and it should be understood as one.
- [32:20]
Matthew McConaughey
What are values? All right, Values are fundamental principles. They're emotional and intellectual guidelines, beliefs that we have for ourselves, beliefs that we can rely on in a pinch when we're lost, frustrated and confused. Values govern our daily interactions. They define our expectations, not only of ourselves, but usually of what we expect others to do as well. That does not always happen. Now, coming up on Dad's Day, I was asking myself, what's a value that I learned as a child that has really helped me become the man I am today and pursuing to be? And the one that I remember the most, it was preached to me by my dad, is this. Don't half ass it. Don't half ass it. Boy, that never goes out of style, does it? I mean, think about it. If you're gonna do something, if you've chosen to do something, whatever it is easy, hard, if you give it your all and you don't half ass it, win Lose, draw, get what you want, don't get what you want. Whatever the outcome is, if you don't half ass it, at least you're not going to have to wonder, oh, would the outcome have been different? What if I did give it my all? And, boy, wondering, that is what keeps us up at night.
- [33:32]
Susie Welch
Okay, okay, I am having. I'm triggered because when I wrote my PhD thesis and then you submit it, after you submit it, it's not like everybody just claps. You have to go into oral exam and you sit there with really, really smart people who are the leaders in your field who've all read your thesis more closely than you, you know, ever want anybody to read anything. And they come in loaded with questions. One of the questions that I was. I literally spoke about it for an hour and a half is when we sat there and we debated the difference between personality and values.
- [34:04]
Matthew McConaughey
What?
- [34:05]
Susie Welch
Matthew Mon Makhani, he's not wrong when he kind of defines values. I think he was kind of reading it. He was not wrong. They are deeply held beliefs. That's all very true. He didn't make the distinction between values and virtues. It's fine. Then he goes on, he says, don't half acid. All right, so this is kind of a piece of life advice. It's kind of a personality trait. Some people have acid and some people don't. I would actually say it tracks with a value, and the value is achieved. If you're high achievement, you want to win, you don't want to half asset. You want to do it. You want to do it right? You want to be seen as having mastery. Okay? That's achievement. And then other people, they don't have that value. They have low achievement, and they don't care about winning and losing, and they don't care if things are half assed. And you know what? They have to live with the consequences of it. Just like we have to live with the consequences of high achievement, because sometimes high achievement has its costs also. So I could say we judge each other a ton about our values. And people with very high achievement often judge people with lower achievement. They say things like, they half ass everything. And people with lower achievement look at the people with higher achievement, and they say on their deathbed, they're going to wonder why they didn't, you know, have more fun. They say all sorts of things, but this is a value achievement. And one thing we need to understand is there's a lot of different opinions about it. Not everybody shares it. And as Matthew McConaughey says at the end. That's advice that never gets old. Well, it doesn't get old for people who have the value of achievement, which I assure you a huge Hollywood star like Matthew Mahanache has very high achievement. To achieve what he has had. He has that value. Okay? You know, my sister is a yoga teacher and a life coach and I have very, very high achievement, in case you couldn't have picked that up off of me already. And she has rather low achievement. Okay. I love her. She's a divine human being. And when she teaches yoga on the beach and she comes home in the summer, I am want to say to her, how many people were there there? She'll say, you know Susie, I don't count. And I say, well, don't you want to know if there were more or less people than the day before? And she said, I just don't care about winning and losing like you do. Out of 16 values, I don't know. I'm sure it's in her bottom five. It's just not how she organizes her life. She organizes her life around her friends and her volunteer work and her partner and her kids. Okay? She has other values. Achievement isn't one of them. Maybe she wouldn't like the term half assed. Maybe nobody would like that term because it's so derogatory. But people with lower achievements, achievement, they just don't see the point of getting mastery and getting everything right and putting everything into it and, and full assing everything. It's a waste of time to them. I think he's right. I think he's talking about a value. I think the thing he's wrong about and really wrong about is that it's not a value for everybody. It's a choice. Like all values.
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Susie Welch
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- [38:52]
Susie Welch
All right, we just heard from Jay Shetty before briefly, but now we're going to hear to talk much more specifically about values and how you can figure out what your values are.
- [39:00]
Jay Shetty
Values are a very intangible word and so there's a very easy way to figure out what you value. There's two things you have to look at. You look at how you spend your money. The most painful thing you can possibly do. Go through your bank statement and look at where your money is being spent. That is what you value. The other thing that we spend spend just like we spend money is how we spend our time. Those are the two most perfect ways to see what you currently value. Your value isn't what's in your head, isn't what's in your heart. It isn't what's in your mind. It's how you spend your money and how you spend time.
- [39:37]
Susie Welch
Make it stop. I can't take it. Look I all props. He's a gigantic following. You are watching this and you love Jay Shetty. Okay, how can I criticize him? He's massive success. But now I'm going to do that. All right, listen. The problem with what he's saying and maybe he would agree if he was sitting right here, and I was to sort of say this to him. Is that how we spend our money and how we spend our time are often accidental and by default, or because somebody is pressuring us, or because one of the four horsemen of values destruction has galloped in and stolen our lives. He's wrong when he says, your values are not in your heart and your. They are. They're in your heart and your head. The problem is we don't live them. That's why you have to know what they really are, so that you can find out why you're so unhappy. So let's just unpack this a little bit. Your values are how you want to live your life. If you could live your life any way you wanted. They're aspirational. Almost nobody lives them exactly as much as they want to live them. Again, Once again, only 1% of the population, according to our data, is fully living their values. A lot of times we spend money on stuff and we hate the. We hate it. We hate what we're doing. We just buy a big house and we, you know, the kids are happy, but we're thinking to ourselves, I didn't want to live here anyway. Or we go on a vacation, and it's like, you know, 10 girls and everybody's drinking, and we think, you know what? They may have high scope, but I'd rather be at home with my book and my dog. We often spend our times doing things that are not related to our values, and that's why we've got the oh feeling in our stomach. Let me go over what these four horsemen of values destruction are, okay? Because we can be spending our time and our money in a way that is not at all related to what our values are. So, look, the first horseman of values destruction. They all start with E, so my students will remember them more clearly and easily. Well, the first one is economic security. We do a lot of things so that we feel financially secure, but we do that whether we care about money or not. So we may be spending our money, for instance, on getting an mba. We're doing that because we feel like, okay, we're going to get a better job. But actually, it could be that money's not a value to us, and we're doing it because our parents are telling us to. But actually, what we really want to do is go into dog rescue, and we really don't care about what our house looks like. And so we do a lot of things for money, including spending money to make more money when we don't really care about money. Now, of course, some people care about money a lot. And I get it. And so this does not pertain to them. The second horseman of values destruction is expectations. These are the expectations that other people put on us. There's a lot of should in this world. You should do this. You should go here for vacation. You should take this job. You should be friends with this person. There's a ton and ton of shoulds. Okay? We can write a lot of checks and we can spend a lot of time doing stuff that other people are are expecting us to do or that we think they're expecting us to do. And it has nothing to do with our true values. Nothing at all. Like, look at people. 70% of this great research, it shows that 70% of people who are in medical school are there because their parents wanted them to become doctors. Who knows? Maybe all 70% want to become doctors. Maybe it's only 30%. Think about how much money and time they're spending pursuing somebody else's expectations. Okay, I hope you all have doctors who wanted to become doctors. But there's quite a few who did not. But they did because of expectations. Third horseman of values destruction is expedient. Sometimes we don't live our values because it's just so much easier. So you may look at your schedule and say, wow, look at all the time I'm commuting. I must really value my family living in the suburbs. But in fact, it's just easier not to move. And what you really value is scope, the excitement of the city, or you really value belonging, the community left behind in the city. But it would just be too hard to move. Okay, but you've spending a lot of time commuting. It doesn't tell you what your values are. It could tell you how close or far you're living from your values. And the final e is events. Okay? This is a horseman that gallops into your life, and it usually comes in the form of a divorce or a layoff or a death. And your life really changes and you don't go reclaim your life again. You kind of get into a habit of living away from your values. Because an event that's taking your life away and you can spend a lot of time and a lot of money maintaining that life that's far away from your values. And by the way, I want to take issue with one other point. There is no easy way to know our values. There's not. Two easy questions. Finding out what your values are. Some of the hardest work you'll ever do in your life because you have to peel back and peel back the layers of armor that you've put up around yourself. The reason why becoming you is called the Class where everyone Cries is because when you finally see what your values are, it's usually a moment of reckoning. It's not easy easy. It's a worthwhile exercise to ask how am I spending my time and how am I spending my money? But it doesn't answer for you what your values are. It may ultimately answer for you how far you are from living what your values are. But it doesn't tell you what your values are. For that, you can't self report on it. You have to take. You can take my assessment, the values bridge. There's other values assessments out there. You have to have a very good psychometrically designed assessment that removes social desirability bias. Because we all have stories in our head about what our value should be. But I'm going to disagree with respect with Jay Shetty here on how easy it is to discover your values. I don't think those two questions tell you. I mean, they're data. They will only tell you how close or how far you are from living your values. So we've covered a lot of ground about values. I hope you're crystal clear on what they are now. But there's one more piece that's really crucial to understand, and that is can your values change? And so let's listen to what Dr. Jessica Borsch, an acceptance and commitment therapist, and she's very popular popular psychology YouTuber. Let's hear what she has to think and a shocker afterwards. I will also opine values can change over your lifetime.
- [45:11]
International Animal Rescue / Children's Miracle Network Announcer
We move through different phases. When you are maybe in college and you're single and you don't have any children, the things that are important to you, the things that you want to be focused on, might be different than when you're married with kids or when you're trying to build a business or start a. A creative career. And the things that are important to you might be different later in life. So we don't just set our values once and say that's it. We do want to be checking in with them maybe once a year, every couple months. Just make sure we're still on the right track on the true north that we want to be headed towards.
- [45:47]
Susie Welch
All right, let's talk about this very, very important question that's raised here, which is do our values change? I get this constantly get it in the classroom when I teach the intensives. People want to know, can your values change in the answers? Of course they can change, but not nearly as much as you think. All right, so there are two fields in the area of values. It's sort of bifurcated. There's values formation, how we come by our values, and then there's values expression. Technically, that's the field I'm in, values expression, what values you have and how they play out in your life. But of course, in my travels, I bump all the time into the people who are in the field of values formation. And now I hope not to offend them all with my very plain spoken summary of their entire, entire body of work, which is literally, you know, hundreds of years old. Let's think about this way. Your value, where do your values come from? Well, your values come from imagine, let's imagine a huge cauldron, okay? And a lot of stuff goes into that cauldron starting the day you, you know, sort of have cognition, all right, when you're two or three years old, the example of your parents, your personality, your culture, your race, the era you were born in, childhood trauma, wonderful childhood experiences, books that you've read, friends, everything goes into that cauldron. And it kind of simmers in a big stew, if you will, until you're in your early 20s. Okay, that's. Look, there's. Nobody's ever going to know the exact date your values are formed. Some people form them earlier and others form them somewhat later. But by your mid-20s, you've had a lot of experiences and the rank order of your values is pretty set. What will change is your expression of them. If you don't have a family and you don't have kids and you're not married, how you possibly, possibly really going to be expressing family centrism? I mean, maybe your own parents or maybe you've got a lot of cousins. If you're not working, how are you going to express work centrism, whether or not you have it? If you have high scope and you don't have any money, you can't express it. So your values, I think, you know, in different phases of your life, you're, you're expressing them more. And, but I think your values are pretty stable, with one exception. A seismic event. A seismic event can change your values, okay? And by that I mean having a baby, having a divorce. When my husband passed away, a seismic event occurred for me and my value of belovedness, of romantic love dropped from pretty high up to rock bottom number 16. And so a big Event in your life can certainly shuffle your values, but I don't think your values are changing in every single season. I think that your values are pretty stable and set from all the experiences that led up to that cauldron in your early 20s. I think there is some shifting around when a big event happens, happen, you get fired, you suddenly think about work differently, maybe, but maybe not. Maybe they shift for a while and they shift back. I think your values are relatively stable. Your expression changes with the exception of a seismic event. So that's my view on that.
- [48:20]
International Animal Rescue / Children's Miracle Network Announcer
Our faith, our traditions, our family practices, all of these things can give us an understanding of what is important to us, either because we really resonate with it or because of maybe some. Some bad or unpleasant experiences we've had that have made us realize, like, I really want to be this, not that, or I've really been craving this. This has been missing in my life. The people in your life, the types of relationships that are in your life. So, for example, if being in a romantic relationship is really important to you, but you're not in a relationship right now, that can still be a value, still be something that you're moving towards and what, you know, hobbies, things that you're doing in your spare time, your career, if that's something that's important to you.
- [49:05]
Susie Welch
She's right. These are ways we can discern our values. But it's a little too undefined for me. And I think that actually this is kind of where we get into trouble. This kind of vagueness of kind of groping around like, what's my values? Where are they? You know, oh, I wish I had more of this, maybe less of that. I like us actually knowing our values. I think this is critical data from. But for us, doing what she says about checking in every once a year on your values, you gotta have words for your values. You've gotta know what they are. And this is why I developed the values bridge and the whole language of values in the Becoming youg methodology. I wanted people to have consistent words. I do an exercise in class called Whose Life do youo Want? Anyway? In that exercise, which I love, by the way, and I think it's really fun and very eye opening for people. And you can do it right now after you listen to this podcast is you write down a list of people whose lives. Lives you would want if you couldn't have your own life. Okay? Most people want their own life. Okay, Guess what? I'm the queen of the world. You can't have that life. They could be famous, they could be not famous, they could be Oprah, they could be your next door neighbor, they could be your parents. They may be very different from each other, but just come up with five or six of them and then write down in the column next to it, what is it about their life that you covet, for lack of a better word, what made you write them down? Is it because they're interesting, they have an interesting life? Is it because they're rich? Is it because they're beautiful? Is it because they've traveled a lot? Is it because they've got, got a good family? Just write exhaustively and honestly. The reasons are on your list. But then do this, this is another column, and on the final column, write what you would leave out of their life. There's probably nobody whose life you want.
- [50:35]
IXL Advertiser
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- [50:36]
Susie Welch
And it's actually really interesting data to say I don't want their celebrity, I don't want their divorce, I don't want their estrangement from their kid, I don't want their lack of dogs because they travel so much. And I think in both of those columns, when you look down, if you've done it for five or six people, there's there, you'll see themes emerge. I remember a student came in one time and he said, like, I'm going into banking, I don't even know why I'm taking this class. I heard it's a fun class. And we did this exercise and every single person he put down was an entrepreneur. And every single thing he said was like, you know, their freedom, their self determination, their creativity, their impact. These are all things, these are all values, by the way, but they're all things he was not going to get in investment banking, at least not for a long time. And it was very, very eye opening that he was kind of not talking the truth to himself about his value. I love what she's saying about sort of looking and reacting to other people, but I'd rather be more systematic about it to really excavate what your values are. And I love that exercise, but you've gotta be really honest when you do it. You gotta really write down all the reasons, even if it's kind of embarrassed, like, you know, they're great looking or they're really, really rich or they never got married or they did get married. Write the truth. There are a lot of values buried in this exercise and I think we've got to get real and we've got to get gritty about what our values and be really systematic about it. The language matters. All right, so that is our values of Palooza. It's done. And next time anybody asks you what values are, you will just like have the answer. You'll know what they are and what they aren't, which is really good. Okay. Why? Why is it so good? Because the next thing we're doing on the Becoming youg podcast is we're gonna help you figure out what your values are. And the way we're gonna do that is in a whole series on every single value in the Welsh Bristol Values Inventory, going all the way through them. And we've got a great series lined up for you. So now that you know what values are, we're gonna figure out what what your values are so that you can live the life that you were born to live. And that is what I want for you. So thank you so much for being here. I'm Susie Welch. If you've got any questions or comments. Hey, please leave. If you liked this podcast, by the way, leave us a review. Add a comment. You can always reach me@hellosusiewelch.com and I'll see you next week.
- [52:51]
International Animal Rescue / Children's Miracle Network Announcer
We are Children's Miracle Network, a nationwide partnership of people and organizations all working side by side to raise funds for 170 children's hospitals across the United States and Canada. These nonprofit hospitals provide a wide range of care for all kids. From routine checkups to life changing treatments, research and mental health resources. Make big change today for kids in your community. Support your local children's hospital with a monthly or one time gift online. Learn more@cmn.org.