Fear of change is powerful. But the deepest fear of all may be this: the fear of stepping into a life that is fully our own. In the final episode of the three-part Be Not Afraid series, your host Suzy Welch shares a deeply personal story about loss, identity, and the moment when fear gives way to decision.

The episode revisits one of the podcast’s most intimate stories — one that longtime listeners will remember well — about a solitary swan who appeared at Suzy’s home, shortly after the death of her husband. The two formed an unusual bond, each navigating life alone after years of partnership. Then one day, the swan disappeared.

Her departure became a powerful metaphor for something many people face but rarely name: the moment when the life we knew is gone, and the future depends on choices we are not yet sure we’re ready to make. Drawing on her own experience of grief and reinvention, Suzy explores the quiet but critical turning point that follows self-discovery — the decision to act. 

Because growth does not happen by accident. Reinvention does not happen by accident. Becoming does not happen by accident. It happens when we decide. This episode concludes the Be Not Afraid series with a simple but challenging question: Are you waiting for life to change… or are you ready to begin again?

Missed the Suzy the Swan story? Catch up here:

Thinking of Pursuing Your Passion as a Career? Please Think Again.

If You Knew Suzy...The Swan, That Is...

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Fear of the unknown gets plenty of attention. But an even deeper fear lurks beneath it: the fear of what might happen if we truly understood ourselves. In Part II of the Be Not Afraid series, your host Suzy Welch explores why self-knowledge can feel so threatening — and why so many people instinctively avoid it. 

The episode begins with a revealing experiment: Suzy once asked her colleagues to anonymously write down the first word that came to mind when they saw her name appear on their phones. Most responses were predictable. One was not. The word was “machine.”

That moment opens a larger conversation about values — how difficult they are to see clearly, and why powerful forces constantly distort them. Suzy explains the four dynamics she calls the Four Horsemen of Values Destruction: Expectations, Expedience, Events, and Economic security.

Along the way, she responds to a listener who admits she’s afraid to take The Values Bridge assessment for one simple reason: she worries the results might reveal that her life is far from aligned with what matters most. The fear is understandable. But the data tells an interesting story: almost no one is perfectly aligned with their values — and yet understanding that gap can be the beginning of real freedom.

Because the truth about ourselves can be uncomfortable. But avoiding it comes at a far greater cost. And sometimes, the moment we finally face it brings something we’ve longed for: relief.

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Fear of the unknown gets a lot of attention. But the deeper fear — the one that quietly shapes our careers and lives — is something else entirely. The fear of knowing ourselves.

In this first episode of a three-part series on fear and self-discovery, your host Suzy Welch explores why so many people avoid looking closely at who they really are — and what they truly want. Drawing inspiration from the iconic film “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” Suzy examines the psychological reality behind what researchers call information avoidance: our tendency to avoid truths that might force us to change.

She tackles a question from podcast listener Katie, who took a brave step after decades of professional success: a sabbatical to reassess her life and career. Now she faces a dilemma many people share — should she admit that she took a sabbatical on her resume, or hide it from potential employers?

This episode kicks off a three-part “Be Not Afraid” series on the courage it takes to change your life from the inside out. Because the truth is simple: If you don’t stop to ask who you are… life will eventually force the question. And the sooner you ask it, the better.

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What if the real risk isn’t oversharing…but undersharing?

We spend so much energy worrying about saying too much – about TMI, about revealing something we might later regret. But in the process, many of us end up living with more unsaid than said, and with more authentic moments missed than taken.

On this counterintuitive (and hilarious) episode of Becoming You, host Suzy Welch speaks with Harvard professor Leslie John about the underrated power of oversharing and her new book “Revealing.”

The conversation explores what the Becoming You methodology calls an authenticity gap in the value of Voice – the distance between how much we value self-expression and how much we actually practice it. When should you reveal more of your inner world? How can revealing more build trust, deepen connection, and help you live more authentically? And what is the true cost of silence?

Oversharing isn’t the enemy. Neither is restraint. The real skill is learning how to reveal in a way that serves both you and the people around you. This conversation is about Voice, about closing the gap between what you value and how you live, and about practicing self-expression as a learnable skill.

And yes, you’ll hear a few oversharing stories that may make you rethink exactly where the line is.

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You’ve heard it a thousand times: What’s your why? Your purpose, your North Star, where your best life is hiding. But what if the “why” question isn’t the one that actually gets you unstuck?

In this special episode, your host Suzy Welch hears from the global community of certified Becoming You coaches about the questions they use to jumpstart purpose-seeking clients. Their answers are nothing short of revelatory. 

Suzy introduces three of the most powerful questions, designed to unlock forward motion when you’re feeling stuck, stalled, or secretly longing for something more. And yes, one of the questions may or may not be about dogs – but not in the way you’d think. 

This is not a fluffy “find your passion” conversation. It’s a practical, sometimes uncomfortable excavation of what’s really stopping you — and what might finally set you free. If you’ve been circling the question of purpose but not making progress, this episode offers three new entry points. Forget your why. Start here.

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If you’ve read even one headline about careers lately – who hasn’t – you may be feeling a familiar cocktail of emotions: fear, dread… and total confusion.

Mass layoffs. AI everywhere. Ageism creeping younger and younger. Trade jobs suddenly looking more secure than white-collar work. Remote work still the most controversial topic in modern professional life. You might be left wondering, “What the heck is happening with careers right now?”

In this special installment of Career Confidential, your host Suzy Welch is joined by co-host Dustin Liu, Associate Director of NYU Stern’s Initiative on Purpose and Flourishing, to break down five of the biggest career headlines shaping the world of work right now, including:

This is an episode for anyone trying to make sense of today’s career chaos, and trying to build a life of purpose and stability inside it.

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What if the thing you’ve been told your whole life, that you work too much, that you don’t relax enough, that you should “just enjoy yourself” isn’t something you need to “fix”…but a value?

In the third and final episode of this travel series, your host Suzy Welch takes us to Paris. Not for romance, not for nostalgia, not even for the croissants (though, obviously, yes). She goes for something much deeper: clarity.

This is the concluding chapter in a three-part exploration of how travel can wake us up – not to new landscapes – but to new eyes. To the truth of who we are underneath the stories we tell ourselves.

In Part One, Suzy stood at the Taj Mahal and reckoned with Belovedness, the value of romantic love. In Part Two, she returned to Sicily and uncovered a family history that reshaped her understanding of Scope – the hunger for a big, expansive life. And now, in Part Three, we arrive in Paris in the summer, at a moment that is both outwardly relaxing and inwardly seismic.

Suzy finds herself on the Île de la Cité, standing before the newly restored Notre Dame, and confronted by a surprising realization about two values that rarely coexist peacefully: Eudemonia…and Workcentrism. This is an episode about:

The goal isn’t to live someone else’s version of happiness, it’s to live in alignment with your own. Welcome to seeing yourself, at last, with new eyes.

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What if the stories you inherited about where you come from were all a lie?

In part two of a three-episode Becoming You series about the places you travel and the self-discoveries that arise, your host Suzy Welch voyages to Sicily. Not for sun-drenched escapism or waterfront glamour (hello White Lotus), but to confront the whispered mythology that shaped her childhood and, without her knowing it, her values. This is an episode about ancestry, silence, and the stories families tell to survive.

Suzy takes us to Caltanissetta, her family’s ancestral village in the center of Sicily, where a long-told narrative of nobility and elegance collides with historical truth, about the kind of suffering that forces people to choose between staying—or running for their lives. What unfolds is not just a revelation about where her family came from, but a profound insight into a core value she would later name Scope: the desire (or lack thereof) for risk, stimulation, and a big, expansive life.

This episode explores:

With vulnerability, honesty, and unexpected joy, Suzy reflects on her ancestors’ courage, and their decision to leave everything behind, cross an ocean, and choose uncertainty over suffering. And she asks the question at the heart of this series: What do the places you’ve been reveal about who you are?

Next week, the journey continues—in Paris—where a completely different truth waits to be discovered. Because sometimes, you have to travel all the way across the world to meet yourself. 

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What if the places you travel don’t take you far away… but bring you closer to who you actually are?

In this deeply personal and openly vulnerable episode of Becoming You, your host Suzy Welch launches a rare three-part storytelling series about travel—not as escape or travelogue, but as excavation. On this first trip, you will land in Agra, India, at the foot of the Taj Mahal. What unfolds there is not a story about architecture or history, but a reckoning: about love, power, identity, and the value Suzy would later name Belovedness (long before she had the language for it).

Through the lens of her marriage, the complicated legend of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal, and the quiet ache of self-betrayal that can come from living misaligned with your deepest values, Suzy shares the kind of insight that only comes from a trip to the other side of the world. Along the way, you’ll hear about:

Sometimes, you have to go very far away to finally see yourself. Be sure to tune in next week, as we journey to Italy for a story that is at once identity-shattering and deeply clarifying. And we want to know, where have you traveled and found yourself? Leave a review with your answer. 

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Ordinarily, Becoming You is a podcast about the information we have to excavate, the decisions we need to make, and the actions we have to take, in order to live by design, not default. This week, in an unusually intimate episode, our host Suzy Welch talks about the words you need to say, three to be exact, to the same end. The only hitch is, you need to say them before it’s too late.

Suzy almost missed that chance with her lifelong best friend, Sue Jacobson, this week’s special guest, in an episode that brings us inside a hospital room awash with despair, and plumbs just what it means to demonstrate the very hard, very necessary act of mattering.

Yes, mattering. It sounds simple. It feels obvious. And yet, as this episode explores, most of us are getting it wrong.

Drawing on the research of Professor Zach Mercurio, and decades of real-life friendship, work, loss, and resilience, Suzy breaks mattering down into three teachable practices: Noticing, affirming, and needing. These aren’t platitudes. They’re behaviors. And when done right, their impact is profound.

You’ll hear live demonstrations with Suzy and Sue, honest missteps, and one extraordinary story that reveals why telling people “you matter” isn’t enough. Along the way, Suzy and Sue admit to friendship ruptures, leadership lessons, near-loss, and why vulnerability is the most underused advantage in work and life.

If you want to be a better boss, partner, friend – or simply a more impactful human – this episode will give you tools you can use today. Fair warning: it may also make you cry.

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