This week on Becoming You, your host Suzy Welch takes on fame, or what the Becoming You methodology calls Luminance, one of the 16 values measured by The Values Bridge, Suzy's psychometric tool for figuring out what actually matters to you. And of all 16, this is the one people are least willing to own. Only 3% rank it in their top 5. Most people bury it near the very bottom. Suzy thinks that's not because so few of us feel it, it's because it's the one value you're not supposed to say out loud.

Suzy opens with a story she's never quite gotten over: a college friend whose hunger for fame she once dismissed, judged, and didn't understand, and the friendship it cost her, for good, decades later. She goes back 3,000 years to Achilles, who's given a choice between a long forgotten life and a short one with undying glory, and picks glory, and nobody in the Iliad thinks he's a narcissist for it. Then she gets into the actual research on why people want to be known: for status, for a platform to do good, as the byproduct of doing great work, or simply so they're not forgotten.

Plus: actress Paloma Garcia-Lee talks with real candor about what it's like to hold this value and live it out loud, and casting director Sophia Welch (and frequent guest, and Suzy’s daughter), who's spent 14 years in rooms full of people chasing the spotlight, rejoins to talk about what fame really rewards, and what it really costs.

If you've ever wanted to be known, or caught yourself judging someone else for wanting it, this episode is for you.

Follow Paloma Garcia-Lee here. 

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Agency is the number two value in the Becoming You data set—the drive to be the author of your own life, no exceptions, no apologies. But according to Suzy, it's the Jekyll and Hyde of values: sometimes it's your best friend, helping you build the life you actually want. Other times it's the thing quietly running through the history of wars, divorces, and career fails, because your Agency is always bumping up against someone else's.

In this deep dive episode, Suzy takes you 3,000 years back to the earliest recorded signs of Agency. She sits down with NYU Stern self-determination scholar Steve Blader to unpack why some people need to run their own show and others don't. And she talks to Pastor Jimmy Scroggins about the 18% of people for whom Agency is a low value—including what it actually means to hand your Agency over to a higher power, and why that's not the same thing as having none.

Plus: entrepreneur and content creator Drew Henry joins to talk about how Agency shaped his career pivot from corporate marketing to working for himself—and the time it got him called into an HR meeting over an out-of-office request. (You'll want to hear the email he sent.)

If you've ever felt like you had to be the one calling the shots, or wondered why you can't seem to let go of control, this episode is for you.

As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge. 

You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the ⁠Becoming You newsletter⁠ for fresh new content in one tidy package.

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This week on Becoming You, your host Suzy Welch tackles the value everyone assumes they already understand: happiness. Using data from the Values Bridge — the assessment that has now been taken by hundreds of thousands of people — Suzy reveals that Eudemonia, the value of personal happiness, self care, flourishing, and fun, is far from universal. It skews by gender, it drops off sharply with age, and it even shifts with income. 

Suzy traces the philosophical fault lines around happiness, from Aristotle's insistence that it's a whole life and not a good afternoon, to the Stoics' case for tranquility over feeling, to the Buddhist idea that the chase itself might be the trap. Along the way, she shares a deeply personal story about discovering Dostoevsky in tenth grade and dropping it on her family at Christmas dinner — with her sister Elin along to set the record straight. Whether Eudemonia sits at the top of your values list or, like Suzy's, near the bottom, this episode makes the case that knowing exactly where you stand on fun and self care is one of the most useful things you can know about yourself.

As a Becoming You podcast listener, use code PODCAST for 50% off The Values Bridge. 

You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the ⁠Becoming You newsletter⁠ for fresh new content in one tidy package.

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You can follow and tag Suzy on:

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Joy isn't the reward you earn after all the work is done. Joy is the work. That's what a new series on For the Love with Jen Hatmaker is all about, the Sacred Yes. It's choosing delight, rest, and pleasure on purpose because saying yes to yourself, that's the thing that finally lets you fill your table with everybody else. Come find your Sacred Yes with Jen. Follow and listen to For the Love with Jen Hatmaker wherever you get your podcasts.

This week on Becoming You, your host Suzy Welch takes a step back to answer a question that is central to the podcast and the Becoming You methodology: what even are values? Values are one of the three core data sets at the heart of the Becoming You methodology, alongside interests and aptitudes, but Suzy's research shows that only 17% of people actually understand what values are — and just 7% know their own. So before going any further with the series, this episode is a full reset: a deep dive into what values actually mean.

Suzy lays out the real definition — values are the deeply held beliefs that drive our choices, not to be confused with virtues, the things we all agree are simply good to have — and then puts that definition to the test by reacting in real time to a lineup of well-known voices weighing in on values, including Mark Manson, Ellen DeGeneres, Matthew McConaughey, Jay Shetty, and Gary Vee. Along the way, Suzy separates genuine values from virtues, life advice, and personality traits, and introduces her own framework, the Values Bridge, along with the "four horsemen of values destruction" that keep people from living the values they actually hold.

She also answers one of the questions she gets asked most often: can your values change? Suzy explains why the answer is more nuanced than most people think — and what it takes to actually uncover your own value hierarchy.

With this foundation in place, Suzy sets up what's coming next: a full series working through each of the 16 values in the Welch Bristol Values Inventory, one by one. 

Ready to know yourself better? Start here, with The Values Bridge. 

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This week on Becoming You, your host Suzy Welch delivers the finale of one of the most personal series she has ever shared on this podcast. Part 3 has it all: the last three aptitude tools, the twist she wasn't sure she'd tell, and the moment the whole story finally makes sense.

For anyone just arriving: go back. Don't worry, we'll wait! Parts 1 and 2 are there for you, and this ending lands so much more when you know where it started.

For everyone who's been here from the beginning, here's where we are. Suzy walks through the final three tools she uses in her Becoming You class at NYU Stern to help students identify their aptitudes: the Career Traits Compass, a framework she developed herself; the Enneagram, explored in depth with one of the world's leading experts, Rasanath Das; and the Viewfinder, a 360-degree tool that reveals something most people overlook entirely — how the world actually experiences you.

And then there's Dan. The classmate who humiliated Suzy in front of 90 people at Harvard Business School back in 1988. The story this whole series has been building toward. The epilogue Suzy wasn't sure she'd share, and the one she now believes may be the real reason she wanted to tell this story at all.

The conviction at the heart of all of it: know your aptitudes, claim them, and live them, because you cannot let someone else write your story for you.

Ready to know yourself better? Start here, with The Values Bridge. 

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Last week, Suzy Welch got publicly humiliated at Harvard Business School. This week? Revenge.

In Part 2 of this three-part series, Suzy picks up where the insult left off — tracing what happened in the immediate aftermath of the incident, the fire it lit inside her, and the very Sicilian response she chose: becoming a Baker Scholar, joining Bain, and making sure no one ever had to guess what her brain was capable of again. Her first husband Eric is back as an eyewitness to all of it.

But this episode isn't just about Suzy's story. It's about yours. Because once Suzy understood what her aptitudes actually were — and learned how to name them — everything changed. And the same can happen for you.

That's why today she's diving into the first of four ways to identify your cognitive aptitudes, featuring the assessment she uses in her Becoming You class at NYU Stern: YouScience. Aptitudes expert and Your Hidden Genius co-author Betsy Wills is back to walk you through what it measures, what it reveals, and why the results have a way of making everything suddenly make sense.

Next week: the final three aptitude assessments, including the Enneagram — and the unexpected epilogue to the Dan story that Suzy still hasn't fully made sense of herself.

Ready to know yourself better? Start here, with The Values Bridge. 

You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the ⁠Becoming You newsletter⁠ for fresh new content in one tidy package.

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You can follow and tag Suzy on:

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This week on Becoming You, your host Suzy Welch opens a three-part series with a confession: she is, apparently, obsessed with insults. Creative ones. Clever ones. The kind that hit so precisely they feel almost prophetic. And there's a reason for that — because once, a long time ago, one insult hit her so hard and so publicly that it changed the entire trajectory of her life. And it just might change yours.

But before she gets to the story, Suzy makes the case for something most of us can't actually do: name our aptitudes. Not what we've been told we're good at. Not what we've practiced or studied our way into. Our real, inborn, wired-in strengths, the ones that explain, once you finally see them clearly, why certain things came easily and others never did, no matter how hard you tried.

To help unpack what aptitudes actually are, Suzy sits down with Betsy Wills, co-author of Your Hidden Genius and one of the world's foremost experts on the subject. And then, for the first time on this podcast, Suzy calls in her first husband, Eric, who had a front-row seat the day the insult landed and knew exactly who Suzy was before it changed her.

The story is told in excruciating detail. The rage is real. And the revenge? That comes next week.

Part 2 arrives next week.

Ready to know yourself better? Start here, with The Values Bridge. 

You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the ⁠Becoming You newsletter⁠ for fresh new content in one tidy package.

PIE360 Feedback tool is available at ⁠pie360feedback.com⁠

Want more Becoming You? Check out the ⁠Becoming You book⁠.

You can follow and tag Suzy on:

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Jannah had a spreadsheet with 340 job applications — organized by posting date, job type, and application portal — because it was the only thing that made her feel like she had any control. Kevin applied to hundreds of jobs, got so beaten down by rejection that he stopped entirely, then made himself start again. Both went to elite universities. Both did everything right. Both will tell you: it was brutal out there.

This week on Becoming You, your host Suzy Welch sits down with two employed Gen Z-ers on her own team, and pulls no punches about what's actually happening in this job market, why it's happening, and what you do about it.

Suzy drops data that reframes everything: 60% of 2026 graduates are pessimistic about their careers. 70% ended up in fields unrelated to what they studied. And only 2% of Gen Z has the values hiring managers are actually looking for.

They get into the worst career advice ever given, the red flag no one warns you about in job interviews, and the one thing you can say to a hiring manager that will stop them cold, in the best possible way. And Jannah asks the question underneath all of it: how do you plan a career when you can't see what's coming?

Take the Becoming You One-Day Intensive this June on NYU’s campus, here.

Ready to know yourself better? Start here, with The Values Bridge. 

You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the ⁠Becoming You newsletter⁠ for fresh new content in one tidy package.

PIE360 Feedback tool is available at ⁠pie360feedback.com⁠

Want more Becoming You? Check out the ⁠Becoming You book⁠.

You can follow and tag Suzy on:

• Instagram: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

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As the poem goes, “They f-you up, your mom and dad. They may not mean to, but they do.” If Father's Day has ever felt more like something you just get through than something you celebrate, this episode is for you.

This week on Becoming You, your host Suzy Welch sits down with Vienna Pharaon — licensed marriage and family therapist and author of The Origins of You — for a conversation they were both a little ambivalent to have. The topic: what happens when your relationship with your father is complicated. And why that has been so hard to say out loud.

They dig into what it actually looks like to do the healing work, why no contact is more nuanced than the internet makes it seem, and whether we ever really "make our peace" with a parent who hurt us. They both share their own complicated relationships with their fathers, and what it means when that relationship doesn’t look like what you’d expect. If Father's Day has ever had a charge to it for you, this conversation might be exactly what you need.

Find Vienna Pharaon on Instagram: @mindfulmft

What is Your Origin Wound? Quiz here 

The Origin Healing Method here 

The Origins of You Book here

Take the Becoming You One-Day Intensive this June on NYU’s campus, here.

Ready to know yourself better? Start here, with The Values Bridge. 

You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the ⁠Becoming You newsletter⁠ for fresh new content in one tidy package.

PIE360 Feedback tool is available at ⁠pie360feedback.com⁠

Want more Becoming You? Check out the ⁠Becoming You book⁠.

You can follow and tag Suzy on:

• Instagram: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• Linkedin: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• TikTok: ⁠@suzywelch⁠

• YouTube: ⁠@suzywelch_⁠

• X: ⁠@SuzyWelch⁠