Becoming You with Suzy Welch

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.
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

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.
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

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.
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

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.
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