← HerMoney with Jean Chatzky
HerMoney with Jean Chatzky
Ep 477: Suzy Welch On How to Find Your Purpose at Work (And Still Pay the Bills)
00:36:45
The step-by-step methodology for finding the career (and life) that fits who you really are.
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- [00:02]
Susie Welch
Humans will act irrationally all the time when it comes to money, and they'll just do what makes the most financial sense, whether or not it's aligned with their values. And so we'll live in a house we don't want to live in. We'll take a job we don't want to stay in. We will do all sorts of things for the money. And at the end of the day, we think the money didn't matter that much.
- [00:22]
Jean Chatzky
Hey, everybody. Thanks so much for joining us today on HerMoney. I'm Jean Chatzky. Very glad to have you along for the ride. And today I want to start with a big, big question. A big question. Are you happy at work? In other words, do you wake up feeling energized and excited to do what you get to do all day? I mean, I hope you don't find yourself loathing your job, but perhaps there's just a little itch, maybe a quiet voice saying, isn't there something more, something a little more fulfilling, more purposeful that lights you up and, and pays the bills at the very same time? That is not too much to ask, is it? My guest today, Susie Welch, has spent the past 15 years helping people figure out what the heck they should actually be doing with their lives. Susie is an award winning NYU Stern School of Business professor. She specializes in helping people identify the perfect career based on their values, aptitudes and interest interests. She's detailed it all in a new book, it's called Becoming youg the Proven Method for Crafting your Authentic Life and Career. And she's here today to break it down for us. But before we do that, we're going to take a quick break. You know, I have learned a lot of lessons from running, about pacing and resilience, and yes, getting older, my hips are very honest with me these days. The main lesson I've learned, our bodies are capable of some pretty incredible things, but they also need a little more support as we rack up the miles and the birthdays. Which is why I've been loving Ancient Nutrition's Multi Collagen Advanced Lean. Whether I'm lacing up for a quick 5k or just trying to keep up with life, this collagen supplement has been part of my routine right up there with my morning coffee. And collagen is not just about beauty. It also promotes fat loss. It helps build lean muscle, and it supports joints. Right now, Ancient Nutrition is offering 25% off your first order when you go to ancientnutrition.comhermoney that's ancientnutrition.comhermoney for 25% off your first order ancientnutrition.comhermoney if there's one app you need on your phone in 2025, it's upside. It is one of the smartest tools out there for getting a little something back on the things that you're already spending money on, like gas and groceries and dining out. And if you're someone like me who is in the kitchen, well, it seems like constantly the savings on groceries alone make it worth a try. Here's how it works. You just open the app, you claim a free offer for whatever you're buying and then pay as usual with your credit or debit card. Follow the quick steps right in the app and boom, cash back shows up. It really is that easy. Upside users are earning as much as $280 a year. Download the free Upside app and use promo Hermoney to get an extra 25 cents back back for every gallon on your first tank of gas. That's 25 cents back for every gallon on your first Tank of Gas using promo code Hermoney. We are back with Susie Welch. She is the author of Becoming you. Susie, welcome back. God, it's been a while.
- [03:59]
Susie Welch
Jean, thank you for having me on. And it's great to see you.
- [04:01]
Jean Chatzky
It's great to see you, too. I am curious about what took you in this direction.
- [04:07]
Susie Welch
What took me in this direction was I had been a business journalist. I had found myself being the careers correspondent on the Today show. And I had done a lot of work in this area. And then I was the columnist for Careers for oh, the Oprah Magazine. And this was generally I had a show on CNBC called Susie Welch Fix My Life. And life was going long. And then I had several important leadership roles. I ran a tech startup. I was serving on a lot of corporate boards. And then two things happened at once. Everybody knows about COVID right? Covid kind of hit and changed a lot of people's lives. But right at the beginning of COVID my husband passed away. He died right before COVID started. And it was not, it was not a surprise. We had a farewell. We were able to, you know, part with as much grace as you can bring to that kind of situation. But it did send me into a place in my life where I did a lot of reevaluating. And I asked the question, what do I want to do with my life? What's my purpose? And when we came out of COVID I went back to broadcast journalism and I love it. But I had something else calling me. And so I approached NYU and said, look, I've got a methodology to help people find their purpose. And they said very nicely, okay, look, we'll do it as an experiment. We'll throw a little class together. And it didn't stay little for long because if you offer a class called becoming crafting your authentic life and career to a bunch of 20 somethings, you're going to get people who, who want to take that. So the class quickly developed into a very popular offering and I really developed the material much more deeply. I created a 15 part methodology to help people identify what their purpose was. And then it really grew and grew and we started doing open enrollment for it because there was so much demand. It was really exciting to be onto something that people needed coming out of COVID and people of all ages. Gene. It was like it was young, old people who had never worked before, people who were going back to work, people who were starting careers. It was all. It was really widely sought out. And I think one of the reasons is that you're often told to live your purpose, but no one tells you how. And here I was standing there saying, well, actually I got a methodology. So one thing led to another and we. I was able to have a. Initiative at NYU for purpose and flourishing. And I wrote the book and it's. It all came together. It's very, very exciting that I've now taught it to thousands of people and have a bunch of digital tools that go along with it. And it. And so I came to it because it. There first was a calling and then there was a chasing. I found it. It matched my values, aptitudes and interests. And then it went from there and it sort of became a little movement, which is exciting.
- [06:36]
Jean Chatzky
It's really exciting. And I don't think I've seen you since Jack passed away. So I'm sorry about that. He. He was an incredible man and such a force.
- [06:46]
Susie Welch
Can you believe it's been five years? I mean. Thank you. I will take any condolences I can get. It's. Anybody who's been through it understands. I mean, and everybody has, especially at our age, been through the loss of someone we cherish.
- [06:57]
Unnamed Speaker 1
It.
- [06:58]
Susie Welch
It changes you. And you know, he was actually sort of more ahead of it than I was because he said very prescient things when he was in hospice at home. And he said, look, Susie, you're. You're going to be going into a new phase of your life. This is beautiful. Go seize it. Create the New you. I'm cheering you on. And he was my biggest encourager, and I didn't know what he meant. And of course, I always said things like, no, no, you know, I don't want a new life. And, you know, I. Look, you know, it's a crummy thing to go through, but I think he'd be super proud and, you know, he'd be really bought into it. He'd probably be. I think he'd be my biggest cheerleader.
- [07:31]
Jean Chatzky
So I think this idea of having a methodology to find your purpose is so incredibly helpful. I do a lot of work in the retirement space, and I've been sort of looking at it through that lens that people now have this last third of their lives, and it's. It's a whole new opportunity. But you're right, it presents itself in your twenties. It presents itself all along the way.
- [07:57]
Susie Welch
Just to interrupt, Eugene, as I want to do. I mean, I think that, you know, you talk about people who are sort of in what's called, like the third half, right. Who are just in retirement. They are becoming you fans, because I've talked and taught it to them, and they love it because they're trying to figure out their purpose with a different context. And it is across all ages.
- [08:16]
Jean Chatzky
Yeah. And when we look at the job market, we know that people are unhappy and they're also afraid that their skills are getting stale. LinkedIn recently reported, and you write in your book that we can expect most jobs going Forward to have 50% annual skilled job. I mean, and basically, let's say in your current job, you need to know 10 things, how to do 10 things to be successful. But by this time next year, half of those things will not be the same. They'll be unnecessary, and you'll need. You'll need new skills. So how do we embark on this process in a world that is ever changing?
- [09:01]
Susie Welch
Well, we have to embark on it in a world that's ever changing, because the only thing we're ever going to be able to know for sure is ourselves, because everything else is changing. And that LinkedIn data is stunning. I think it's actually 65% skill churn. And that is. That's daunting. So on the process, it goes like this. There's three parts. You excavate your values, which no one knows by the way. You. Then you identify your aptitudes. Again, this is data that very few of us know. And we take. It takes our whole life to figure out. And then we identify our economically viable interests. This is. This is not easy. This is not a hack, but this is data gathering. And it's very methodical. But there's ways to go about it. We've got to take the guesswork out of this. So four values. I typically do six exercises. They're all in the book. But there's actually. I also created a digital tool which is. There's a free version of it, so I'm not trying to sell anything here. And you can get it online. It's called the Values Bridge. You can go to my website and get it. And it will tell you what your value. You'll have to answer a hundred questions. It will tell you your values. There's 15 human values, and it will tell you your values ranked from 1 to 15. And it will tell you which ones are in conflict, which ones are in harmony. And it will also do a shocking thing, Gene. It will tell you how far you are from living your values. It gives you an authenticity gap. It calculates the authenticity gap. And it says, guess what? You're. You're quite far, or you're already living your authenticity. So relax. I developed this tool because I was doing a lot of exercises. I didn't like the current values exercises that existed. I thought they weren't dynamic enough. I didn't think they were modern enough. I didn't think they reflected how the world had changed. And I have great respect for the other values inventories, especially the two big academic ones, the Alport Strang and the Schwartz Values Inventory. But I thought that they could be more modern, more dynamic, and more representative of how people think about the world today. And so, after really complaining about it, my PhD thesis advisor basically said to me, go and create this tool, Susie. And it was not on my bingo card to create a digital tool to help people identify their values. But the need was there. And you can't do anything until you know your values. So that's the first step. You can do a whole bunch of exercises, or you can just get right to the point and take the test.
- [11:04]
Jean Chatzky
I'm gonna interrupt you at this point just to ask, why don't we know our values? Like, if you live in your body, if you listen to your brain, if you go through life day to day, you would think that at the very least, you know what's important to you.
- [11:21]
Susie Welch
You would think. And yet there are the four horsemen of values. Destruction. I teach about them, I talk about them, I write about them. Look. And it's not like I invented this, but there are four dynamics that get in the way of Us sometimes we know our values, Gene, but we don't live them. Okay, so there's four reasons. They all start with an E. Why do they all start with an E? Because I'm a teacher, and I've got to keep the youth engaged. Okay, but the first one is expectations. We don't live our values because we think the world expects us to live differently. Or we. You know, I had a student one time who said to me, everything we've done in class shows me that I should be a Roomba teacher. And I said, fantastic. And she said, well, I can't do that. What would my parents say? And I said, oh, was not aware of the legislation that prevented MBAs from being Roomba teachers. I mean, she just thought the world expected different things from her because of her education and their cultural expectations, societal gender expectations and so forth. So expectations gets in the way of people living their values. You may sense them, but you may suppress them because of expectations. The second one is events, and that is that sometimes life's events take us away from our values. We really want to live in the city. We want to put work first. Oops. Then we have a kid, and we are inexorably drawn away from living our values. And so we bury them. Then there's expedience. A lot of times living by our values is damn hard. And. And we, you know, we. We just take the easier route because if we followed and lived our values, we'd get in a fight with someone we love. For me, I'm a faithful person. One of my values is my belief in God. And I was almost. Didn't celebrate Easter at the church. I wanted to because it was easier for me not to put my dogs in boarding that day. I mean, honestly, this happens. This is how we live our lives, with expedience. And we're like, oh, you feel the, uh, oh, feeling. And then finally, the last E is something that's near and dear to your heart, which is economic security, and which is that, Please don't kill me, Gene. But, like, just to sum up behavioral economics in one sentence, it's just that humans will act irrationally all the time when it comes to money, and they'll just do what makes the most financial sense, whether or not it's aligned with their values. And so we'll live in a house we don't want to live in. We'll take a job we don't want to stay in. We will do all sorts of things for the money. And at the end of the day, we think the Money didn't matter that much. And so that's why we don't live our values. And sometimes we refuse to stare into them and really actually know them. So. Because it's too painful. I did research at NYU that shows that 17% of people don't even know what values are because we don't have these open conversations about them. That's why I created a language so we could talk about them. And only 7% could actually, with clarity and specificity, identify their own values. Typically, people say when you ask about values, oh, my values. Family and financial security. Well, guess what? What about the other 13? I mean, they're values. So that's, that's my quick answer to your very, very good question.
- [14:04]
Jean Chatzky
Once you figure out what your values are, and I think you're going to have a whole audience here of people who just rush and take that assessment. Once they take it and they, they figure out what their values are, you then need to figure out how to apply.
- [14:24]
Susie Welch
Yeah, don't stop there.
- [14:26]
Jean Chatzky
No, right.
- [14:26]
Susie Welch
Don't stop there. Because guess what, Your values, they may not match your aptitudes and they may not match your economically viable interests. There's three parts to this process. I'm really, really kind of adamant about it, okay? Because look, your values may end up with you saying, I want to be Mariah Carey, but if you can't sing, forget it. Get over yourself. Sing in the shower. Okay? So the next step is to figure out what your aptitudes are. Your aptitudes are your inborn cognitive proclivities and your emotional proclivities. I also include personality in this because you and I both know, and everyone listening to this knows, that you can be good at a job or bad at a job based on your personality.
- [15:01]
Jean Chatzky
Right.
- [15:03]
Susie Welch
Becoming you process is to identify where you are on the eight big cognitive aptitude continuums. And there's. I use four tests to have people identify their aptitudes. At the end of it, you will know your aptitudes, your personality aptitudes, and your cognitive aptitudes. And it may be that. Let's just take one of them. Whether you're a generalist or a specialist, this really matters about whether or not you're happy in your job. Because if you're a person who's a generalist and you're in a specialist job, you're in misery and vice versa. Or let's say, you know, there's a cognitive continuum about idea generation, how many ideas we come up with quickly. And some people are slow burn and they're better at shepherding other people's ideas, and they're good at sort of processing ideas. And other people are just fonts of ideas. And one is not better or worse than the other. No, no, no. But they're better or worse for certain jobs. And you gotta know which one you are.
- [15:53]
Jean Chatzky
I think this is fascinating, but I also wonder if, right, we're born with this stuff, but can we change it? I'm listening to you. I'm one of those idea people, right? Put me in a brainstorming session, I'm good to go.
- [16:07]
Susie Welch
Right?
- [16:07]
Jean Chatzky
But what if I wanted to be the slow burn? I'll take somebody else's idea and shepherd it through.
- [16:13]
Susie Welch
Good luck with it. Why don't you just pretend putting a pen in your hand and signing your name with your natural dominant hand? Natural. It's good. It's easy. You could write all day. Then put the pen into your non dominant hand, try to sign your name. Okay? That's like taking a person who's a font of ideas and putting them at a job where they should be the slow burn. I mean, our aptitudes are the dominant hands of our brain. So, sure, you can train yourself into some of the aptitudes you don't have, and go ahead, try it and do it. But why wouldn't you have jobs that are play to your natural strengths? It's just like, why not write with your dominant hand? So if you're a person who's an idea generator, you're in the right business because you're in the media business, you're in the idea business. If you went to consulting, you might want to jump off a bridge because that kind of slow. Edit your ideas before you say them. That's not how you roll.
- [16:59]
Jean Chatzky
Oh, God, no.
- [17:00]
Susie Welch
Right, okay. That's my point. You got to do a full inventory of your aptitudes, including your personality. We use a test called pi360. Very simple. It takes five minutes. You can send it up to 25 to 40 people that know you and they evaluate you on your quality of your relationships with people, the quality of your ideas, and the quality of your execution. You gotta find out how the world experiences your aptitudes. We've made it, you know, very, very easy for you to do that. Otherwise, you wait your entire life to find that information out. Slowly but surely, you'd say, oh, God, maybe I'm not that good at people, okay? Or, God, I guess I really gotta get better at execution. But you could find out tomorrow.
- [17:38]
Jean Chatzky
I've heard this advice before. That if you really want a good read on you, don't ask yourself. Ask the people who know you best. Why is it that other people see us better than we see ourselves?
- [17:50]
Susie Welch
Oh, because. Oh, my God. Because we're human beings. I mean, the last person you should ask about what you're like is yourself. Until you're very mature and very wise, you don't know. You don't. And I. The hardest message I tell my students, the hardest message I tell them is their personality is not the words they use to describe themselves. I'm kind, I'm compassionate, I'm a good listener, I'm a good friend. Well, maybe you are, but maybe you're not. The only way you know is to find out how the world experiences you. That's your personality. You should see the faces when I say that, Gene. It's like I'm the first person to tell them, surprise. You know how women found out a bunch of years ago about resting bitch face right where, you know, like, finally, you know, we've all started each other. Look, they look at us, and what we're doing is we just have our mouths closed, and they're thinking, oh, she's a bitch. And then we all just started smiling. It's how the world experiences us, and we have to adjust to how the world experiences us. We're not going to change the world. And. And so find out if you're good with people. Every single person in the world. Well, no. Okay. Not every single 90% of people will tell you they're good with people. Are you? You can find out. You can find out exactly how the world experiences you. I created this tool, Gene. I. I created it. I. Why? Because I was, like, so frustrated it.
- [18:58]
Jean Chatzky
Didn'T exist when you took it, what were the surprises?
- [19:03]
Susie Welch
Well, I'm 65, so there weren't very many. Okay. I'm 65, and. And I have a certain kind of personality where I'm relentless in asking people things like, how are you experiencing that? Like, I would say to somebody, you're looking at me like this, but what's the thought bubble over your head? Like, I was in a meeting recently, and there are 12 people on it, and it was a very uncomfortable meeting. And so I paused. I was running the meeting, and I paused the meeting, and I said, I'm looking at your faces, and you're all having a very negative reaction to this meeting. And after this meeting is over, you're going to get together and you're going to talk about this meeting. So let's just Talk about what you're going to say about me right now. So it to my face. Okay. I'm unusual in this way. Most people don't do that. So for. I have to say, with my pi360, there weren't a huge amount of surprises. I think that I am experienced as. Sometimes I'm experienced as more intense than I wish. But that's just. And I. But I know it. And so I often say to people, I know this feels very intense, and I hope I'm not scaring you with my intensity. And. But I'm. This is my area.
- [20:04]
Jean Chatzky
Right. I would suspect that as we get older, we do know ourselves better. We've had more experience just getting feedback from the world and the people around us about how they experience themselves. All right, so we've got these attributes. How do we match them with a job? And if you're in a job now, and I do not want to get into a big discussion about the economy today, but it's more worrisome than it was a few months ago. If you're in a job, can you use what you learn about your attributes to make your job better fit you?
- [20:45]
Susie Welch
Yeah. Well, okay, look, this is exactly what it's for. So, you know, first of all, you know your values and say you value. Maybe you have a very high value of family centrism. And your company's value is not family centrism. I mean, some companies are much more family friendly than others. Or say you have a very high value. One of the other values is belonging. This is a value that represents how much connectivity and community you yearn for. Right. Some people have high, high, high on belonging. Their friends are the most important thing in their life. They love the feeling of community. They want to join the company softball team and so forth. And you're in a company with very low belonging as a value. It's a real sort of individual culture. It's people are individual contributors. There's not a lot of community. And you were thinking like, I hate this company. Well, yeah, maybe you hate it because you have a high value of belonging and it has a low value of belonging. So you can go right down the list of your values and match them with your company's values. Like, and then you can almost immediately say, oh, there's the problem. I have very low, what we call work centrism, which is this is the desire to have work as an organizing principle of your life. But this company really values people. The people who get ahead at this company have the high work centrism. Okay. And you can do that for all 15 values. Okay. Then it comes to aptitudes. So what you need to do is look at your job's requirements. What does it take to succeed in your job? Once you know the aptitudes, you can take a look at your work and say, oh, oh, my God, this is a job for specialists. But I'm a total generalist. This is a job for a sequential thinker, but I'm an idea processor. I mean, as soon as you know the aptitudes, you will be able to identify immediately if the work you're doing is a match for your aptitudes. It's as easy as 1, 2, 3. And the same is true once you find out how the world experiences. You say you find out that you're fantastic with ideas and you're fantastic with execution, but you're so. So with people, relationships. You're. You're shy, you're awkward, you don't really like people that much. All these things are possible. And you find out that the world is experiencing you relationally as meh. 40%. Okay. Where you can go up to 100%, but you're in A, you're in a role where you're A, managing people or B, client focused. You'll be like, oh, there's the problem. I need to be in a role that's just completely execution or completely idea execution or some idea generation maybe, or maybe a job that really is about idea generation and execution. Get me away from people. It's not my strength, it's not my aptitude. And so as soon as you know the data about yourself and the aptitudes, you can start doing analysis that has been kind of going on in the back of your brain in a very kind of vague, unspecified way. It gets very concrete, it gets very real, and you can start making some real decisions.
- [23:24]
Jean Chatzky
I want to talk about the economic feasibility portion of this because we're a money show and you know, as I tell people, you can bake cookies all day long, but if you can't make enough money to support yourself baking cookies, it's a really nice hobby. It is not going to be your life's work. But before we do that, we're going to take a quick break. Hey, everyone, it's Jean Chatky. And this spring, I have been all about refreshing my routines. Closet cleanout, check. Budget rebalancing, you betcha. Meal prep. That's where everyplate comes in. With everyplate, I'm getting vibrant, healthy meals like the Banh Mi style chicken. Lettuce wrap with pickled veggies and Sriracha mayo. It's light, it's flavorful. It's exactly the kind of boost that my week needed. I spend less, eat better, and most importantly in my house, avoid the dinner rut that I fall into so often. Thanks to their rotating weekly menu, every meal takes 30 minutes or less. So what are you waiting for? Dig into these flavor packed meals your household will love. New customers can enjoy this special offer of only $1.99ameal. Go to everyplate.com podcast and use code HERMONEY199 to get started.
- [24:46]
Susie Welch
Started.
- [24:46]
Jean Chatzky
It's applied as a discount on the first box. Limited time only.
- [24:52]
Unnamed Speaker 1
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- [25:18]
Jean Chatzky
We are back with Susie Welsh. She is the author of Becoming youg. We're talking about the methodology for taking your values, your attributes and now figuring out how to make some money using them, how to support yourself. Right. I mean we can want to do as you said, we can want to sing like Mariah Carey all day long. And if you can't carry a tune, good luck. So how do you put this puzzle together and support yourself?
- [25:51]
Susie Welch
So the third part of the Becoming youg methodology is to identify your economically viable interests. This is very carefully selected language and the idea is that you figure out what areas of economic growth are out there. Because everybody should be in some kind of growing field that call you intellectually and emotionally and can pay you according to your value of affluence. So it all works together as a system. All right. Because in the first part where you're assessing your values, you actually come up with a very clear picture of how much money is enough for you. Because baking cookies is fine if you only want to pay rent on a small apartment in Ohio. And it's not enough if you want to live in New York City. I mean, you have to. The first thing we do in the value section of this is find out how much money is enough. And, and for some people, affluence is their number one value and they want to have one helicopter per child. I've heard it said. And other people, affluence literally Comes in at number 15 and there's 15 values. Because they don't even want money left over, you know, they just want to get by because there's so many other things that are so much more important. The number one thing to find out about yourself, and this is the hardest conversation we have in the value section of becoming you, is identifying how much money is the right amount of money for you. That's a values decision making. Because if you want a lot more money, you can do things to make it happen. All right, so once you know how much money is enough, then you have to open the aperture and say, what interests me, what calls me, Is it healthcare, is it hr? Is it helping people? And I don't care what industry it's in. Am I just fascinated by sports? And I've gotta be in the sports industry. And then, you know, that is part of the data pool. You've got a whole bunch of data. You know your values, you know your aptitudes, and then there's a list of industries and kinds of jobs and kinds of companies and that are interesting to you. And then you've got to find the ones that overlap. And it is a look, it's an analytical process. Most people, by the time they get to the end of the process, it's just quite straightforward. They already know what it's going to be because once they've actually seen their values in black and white and their aptitudes in black and white, they say, oh my God, this makes so much sense. I've always wanted that job over there. And in fact, I've always wanted it because it matches my values and aptitudes exactly. And so a lot of times, you know, you get the answer that has been waiting for you.
- [28:04]
Jean Chatzky
When you look at the range of people who've gone through the process and they've done this affluence testing, where do people tend to put themselves? Because, you know, I think there's so much research on money and happiness that tells us that once you get to a certain level where you can live comfortably, and I know comfortably is different for everybody, more money is not going to make you more happy. But there are a lot of strivers in this world who have a very difficult time turning it off.
- [28:37]
Susie Welch
There's no general answer to that. Sometimes I'm just stunned that I'll get an mba. Who you would say, geez, this person's an mba, they're majoring in finance, they want a ton of money and they're like, nope, that's not it. At All I want to live in a community where I can send my kids to public school and I care. If we get to Disney twice a year, that's enough. And then I'm always surprised. What are the reasons? We knew early on. When you do a lot of efficacy testing with digital tools, you're looking at a lot of things to make sure the tool is accurate, and we're very proud that our tool is accurate. But one of the ways you can tell is how much range there is in answers. And the range of answers about how much is enough is very wide. A lot of things go into how much money we want, and one of them is identity. What's our identity of ourselves? So it gets complicated.
- [29:18]
Jean Chatzky
One of the things I thought was interesting is that there are people who are already living their purpose, but they just don't quite know it. You wrote about a single mom named Anna who took your class. Tell us about her and what she needed to change.
- [29:35]
Susie Welch
Anna was an unbelievable student of mine. She was in the executive MBA program. She was in her early 40s. She was a CEO. She ran a chain of med spas. And when she presented in class, she was in despair. I asked the students at the beginning of the semester to write me a letter explaining why they're taking becoming you, because I want to know about them. And she said, you got to help me. I'm in pain all the time when I'm at work, I'm a terrible mother. And when I'm a mother, I'm a terrible CEO. And I. I'm desperate. This class has got to save me. And I was like, oh, this is tough. And as the semester went on, she started off really despondent and not speaking. And it was funny. As the semester went on, she moved closer and closer to the front of the lecture hall. And at the end, she was always sitting in the front row, and she was bubbly and effervescent. And I was like, what the heck is going on with this woman? I mean, she was in a crisis eight weeks ago. And on the last day, students tell the story of their lives going forward for 40 years. They imagine their lives being lived in their purpose. That's the ultimate thing. The outcome of the becoming you process is that you write a narrative of your life going forward for 40 years. And she got up and she wanted to present. And I was like, this is unexpected. And she. She stood up and she said, I'm actually living my purpose already. I am. I think the thing I have to let go of is the guilt. I'M absolutely living my values. I'm 100% living my aptitudes. There's not a single other economically viable interest I'd rather be doing than helping women feel better about themselves. And I can't change my values. I am a good enough mother. And the thing I've got to stop doing is trying to live other people's values. You know, there wasn't a dry eye in the house, to be honest with you. She had to adjust her mindset. She was living her purpose, and she felt enormous gratitude to have realized that. She made some small adjustments as her daughter got older. She was able to bring her daughter on some business trips with her. And that sort of fixed the guilt problem a little bit. She had to be a little bit older for that to happen. But it was a beautiful example of how becoming you can also be very affirming for people like, okay, I can exhale now.
- [31:25]
Jean Chatzky
What a beautiful example, too, of how your life's work comes together. I mean, as you're telling this story, you taught me to let go of the guilt, Susie. I mean, you and I had this conversation when you were working on 10-10-10, before. Before it was a book, when it was a magazine article. We had this conversation two decades ago when my kids were young and I felt exactly the same way as Anna. I'm good at work sometimes, I'm good at home sometimes. There's never a day when I'm good at both. And you basically, you didn't shake me by the shoulders, but you said, guilt is a useless emotion.
- [32:00]
Susie Welch
And I probably went on to say, you, guilt is a choice, which is another thing I often say in that. And if I had a dollar for every woman who had come around to me or written me and said that, I actually said that must have been a period where I said it a lot. And I said it because somebody said it to me, and it saved my life. And the other day, I was doing one of my podcasts, and we landed on talking about what it felt like to be a working mother. Cause one of my listeners wrote in and said, you know, I. I'm gonna quit my fantastic job that I've waited my whole life for. I can't take the stress. And I said to her, don't do it. And I walked her through this whole process and so forth, and we ended up having a clip of it on, like, on Instagram. And then it just got so much action because this is. Is the battle that many of us. It's not just working mothers, it's Working parents, we feel these 15 years when our kids need all of us and our work needs all of us, and there's only one of us. And we fight every day with just this gut deep feelings of guilt and inadequacy. And it doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't. I mean, and my kids are in their 30s now. And I lived it that way. And I was gambling that it was gonna work out. And it worked out.
- [33:03]
Jean Chatzky
I'm so glad it worked out for mine as well. I asked you a question about retirement. And as you were describing the Four Horsemen, I thought, these people who are going into retirement, lucky them, because those four Horsemen, they don't apply as much as they did. Right. Retirement is a time where you have gotten. I mean, it happened for me when I turned 50. I stopped caring as much about what other people thought.
- [33:36]
Susie Welch
Right.
- [33:36]
Jean Chatzky
But the older you get, the more you really feel that. So talk to this last third. This last half, the. Whatever we want to call it, of. Of life.
- [33:49]
Susie Welch
Third half. I love that phrase.
- [33:51]
Unnamed Speaker 2
I.
- [33:51]
Susie Welch
Look, they are. You're so right, Gene. Is that like they are this unique moment where they can let go of all the Horsemen. They realize the Horsemen are dumb and they've gotten to this great place. And so, I mean, I had a wonderful woman who was in one of my Becoming youg workshops, who was exactly in that place. And she said, I'm here because the world is my oyster. I want to know my values and I want to know my aptitude so I can eat the most oysters. And that is the beautiful thing is you are uniquely positioned to figure out what your purpose is, because you're free on many levels. And it can be the best period of your life. I am doing that. I mean, my whole chapter now is to help other people find their purpose. That's my purpose. And I have no more expectations on me. My kids are grown. I'm a widow. I have no more wife and mother expectations on me. My. You know, I am just in a great a place in terms of freedom. I'd give anything to have jacked back. But this is life. And we don't have these options sometimes. But I am in a place where I understand what it feels like to be able to choose which road you go. And that is where people who are in. Many people who are in retirement find themselves. Now, some have some financial issues that they've got to make sure that there's some kind of income coming in. But the beauty of this is they can do what they probably can do with more freedom than when they were 20 or 30. So it's a marvelous tool for people at this phase in their lives.
- [35:09]
Jean Chatzky
Susie Welsh we could have this conversation for hours. It's a whole class. I know we could go a whole semester. But it's fascinating, it's incredibly valuable. I think our listeners are going to get a ton out of it. Thank you so much for being here. Congrats on the book.
- [35:24]
Susie Welch
Jean. Thank you for having me. You're the best.
- [35:26]
Jean Chatzky
If you love this episode, please give us a five star review on Apple Podcasts. We we always value your feedback and if you want to keep the financial conversations going, join me for a deeper dive. HerMoney has two incredible programs. Finance Fix, which is designed to give you the ultimate money makeover, and Investing Fix, which is our investing club for women that meets bi weekly on Zoom. With both programs, we are leveling the plan playing fields for women's financial confidence and power. I would love to see you there. Her Money is produced by Hayley Pascalides. Our music is provided by Video Helper and our show comes to you through megaphone. Thanks for joining us and we'll talk soon.
- [36:14]
Unnamed Speaker 1
There are some departments that if you go into them, you have to have really thick skin and HR is one of them.
- [36:26]
Susie Welch
Here we go again.
- [36:27]
Unnamed Speaker 2
I know. Here we go again, right? But ear licking. Everybody had to attend a mandatory Bible study because that supervisor was a minister and it was approved by hr.
- [36:41]
Unnamed Speaker 1
Her picture was also on there and her nickname was Doomi Decimal.
- [36:46]
Unnamed Speaker 2
Oh my God. I also had a college librarian. Her nickname was Big Tits McGee. Have you ever worked the full day with your kids hidden under your desk?
- [36:58]
Unnamed Speaker 1
No. No.
- [37:00]
Unnamed Speaker 2
Allow yourself. Give yourself the privilege to be human. That's what it is. Just. Just feel it so that you can go through it.
- [37:07]
Unnamed Speaker 1
Yep.
- [37:08]
Unnamed Speaker 2
And come out the other side.
- [37:09]
Susie Welch
Mic drop.