Accidents Happen; You Just Don’t Want Your Life to be One

Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

So that is the late, very great Mary Oliver reading her famous poem, the Summer Day, in which she wanders in a field looking at grasshoppers and ends up posing the most important question ever asked. I mean, ever. What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Now, Mary Oliver wrote this poem in 1990, but it is eternal, it's everlasting. And what matters is not its date, but the question at its core about living intentionally. So in today's podcast, we ask, and I boldly attempt to answer, a very aligned question about what gets in the way of living intentionally. I mean, of course we should live intentionally. Of course we should seize our one wild and precious life. But we don't. Too often, this why not question has been raised recently by two listeners of the podcast. They both wrote in completely independent of each other, and they told me their stories in their DMs. And when I read them, I was like, these two DMs are the same heartfelt worry. They want to drive the bus of their lives and not be hit by it. What a noble desire. What a good desire. What a worthy one. And so I want to talk today about the four, count them, four reasons. It's so, so hard. Because knowledge is power. Forewarned is forearmed, as the saying goes. So that's where we're going today. We're going right there. We are on a quest to conquer your accidental life.

Hi. Hello. Welcome to Becoming youg. I am Susie Welch, and if you are new to our podcast and there have been a lot of you lately, welcome to the fold. I am virtually hugging you. I am so happy you're here. And if you have listened to us before and have chosen to come back again, you know how much I love you. I sincerely do. And I am so happy you're back. So new or old, let's just say what we always do at the beginning of this podcast, which is Becoming youg is a podcast that is here with the express purpose of helping you figure out what to do with your life. It's based on a self discovery methodology that I teach as a professor at NYU Stern School of Business. And if you want to learn all about that methodology, please, please listen to episode 46, where I lay it out step by step. That said, very briefly, becoming you is based on the premise that your purpose lies at the intersection of Your values, your aptitudes, and your economically viable interests. Today we're zooming in on values because when our lives go awry and we end up not living intentionally or authentically, values are usually the issue. Values, by the way, are heartfelt, bone deep beliefs and motivations. The feelings that we hold dear are genuine guiding principles. For example, family centrism. The desire and yearning to have family come first in your actions and decisions, to use them as the screen for what you do in life. Another example of a value is achievement. The desire and yearning for what I call seen success, accomplishments that other people can see. Here's another example. The value of belonging. The desire and yearning to be part of a connected community. I call this the friend value, by the way, and it is one of the 15 personal human values that we talk about in becoming you. Now, our values are really, really in us. We feel them, but sometimes we don't live them. And again, there are four reasons I call them the four Horsemen of values Destruction. And they are the culprits when we end up living accidental lives. Usually one of the four or two of the four. But before we talk about each one of them, let's do something we often do in this podcast. We answer questions from our listeners, the ones that they send in which we really appreciate. And I love to hear from you so much and your feedback is invaluable to me. So recently Madeline wrote in and here's what she said.

Hi Susie, My name is Madeline. I currently work as a barista for major hospitality corporation and and starting in April, I'll be moving up to supervisor of our food and beverage department. Although this is exciting, what I really want to do is move into the marketing side of our company. I don't know if it's smart for me to take the supervisor position for now and to build my reputation, or if I should just make the big jump and start looking into possible positions in the marketing department. I can't help but wonder if I'm just settling. I love my job and I love the place I work, but I know the hospitality is not my true passion.

Okay, okay, so let's just process this. Madeline is saying she has a job. She likes it, does not love it definitively, and she's just been offered a promotion up the ladder she's already on. It will take her higher and deeper into territory she's already in. That's okay, but not her true passion. And she knows that, but she still thinks she might do it because it's a promotion, right? It's an opportunity. And frankly, jumping into marketing, which is what she really wants to do, would be a big jump and probably riskier and scarier and harder. Okay, keep that thought. Hold that thought. Now let's hear from someone. And this convergence of messages to me is kind of amazing. But listen to someone who didn't make that jump when she had the chance. Let's listen to Lori.

Hi, susie. I'm a 47 year old vice president at a hotel management company. I chose to study hotel management in school because it just sounded like fun. But then I graduated first in my class and the expectations have always been very high for me. And now I'm 25 years into this career and I've felt like I've never been true to my authentic self. And now I feel like I'm sorry, stuck. I know I want to earn a lot of money, but I never really cared that much about business. What do you think I should do?

I could just pass out. Frankly, I could just pass out because Lori is meline in the future. Lori took a job that kind of interested her and she stayed with it for 25 years, getting promotions along the way because she was naturally good and smart at things. And now, and now two and a half decades have passed and. And she's locked in by money and momentum and inertia. And she's asking, how did I ever get here? How did I end up spending 25 years of my life in a career that was not my calling? Now, when you hear these two messages side by side, you already know what Madeline should do because it's early and she can, with really minimal hit, take the jump now and got on that road towards a life where it truly calls her. And she should. She should, because otherwise she might just end up spending a couple of decades making money and doing well, but ending up where Laurie is and saying, wait, how did this actually happen to me? Now, I don't want to make it sound like Lori is in a terrible place. She has a good job and she's done really well and it doesn't sound like things have been tragic, okay? But she is saying, but I never really loved this work. I never really loved business, and this was never who I really wanted to be. And she's asking, what should I do?

You know, I feel her pain. Ugh. I feel her pain. I have lived her pain. Pretty exactly. But we will get to that story later after we talk about the four horsemen of values destruction. I'm Susie Welch and this is becoming you.

Hello and welcome back. It's time to talk about the four reasons we let ourselves not live our values. Now, when I teach about the four Horsemen of values destruction, I throw up a scary slide of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, where all the riders are cloaked in black and they just have, like, red eyes that are, like, on fire. It's like, a really cool slide. And I want you to know I'm up there competing with TikTok, so I've got to use every tool I got. And I've also named each one of the Horsemen with the letter E again to keep the youth engaged and to make it easier for them on the exams. What a teacher I am. Right? And so it seems to all work does. Anyway, let's talk about the horsemen. The first one is economic security. Now, the definition of behavioral economics, everyone's favorite subject, is the study of how psychological, emotional, and social factors influence economic decision making, often leading people to act in ways that deviate from traditional rational models. Let me translate what that means. It means that people will often make decisions based on money, even when money doesn't matter to them. Okay, I've just summed up at a gigantic. You know, you can go study. You can get a PhD in behavioral economics. I've taken care of it in 15 seconds. Now you've done it. I've done it. We've bought the car we didn't want because of what it costs. We've rented the apartment we didn't want because of what it cost, because of a price tag. Because at the end of the day, a cold, hard number makes hard decisions easier for us. Instead of us doing the hard work of taking apart a decision with our brains and our hearts and sometimes our souls, okay, we revert to the number. And this is Lori's horseman. She says so herself. She says she's stayed in a job which holds no interest to her. She says it the handcuffs, gold. That's money. And now she's saying, but what about all the other stuff, like me? And that is where the horseman of economic security comes in. We do things that are against our values because we're looking at a number on a piece of paper, and we're saying, if that's the number, then how can I go do this thing I want to do? It's just human nature, and it's a big horseman to fight. All right, let's go to the second E. It's expectations. It's the second one. And in a way, I'm grateful for this horseman, because it is the source of Most movies ever made, when people defied expectations from everyone around them. And, you know, if you think about it, bend it like Beckham. One of my favorite movies, Billy Elliot, which I've seen on Broadway and is a movie, and the Joy Luck Club. These are all about people who defied cultural expectations. And they're all stories of people saying no to those cultural expectations. And we love and admire them for doing that. But we are so often not them. I mean, that's why they're our heroes, because we know about the expectations on us. I encounter in class constantly students who have strong values. They discover their values using our tools and our exercises, like the values bridge. They know what they are. And then they come up to me and they say, but I can't live by these because of blank expectation. There was a student who came up. She did all the hard work of becoming you. I loved her. She was such a bright light. And she did all this values work and all this aptitudes work, and all these interests work. And then when she did her. Her final analysis, it just kept coming back to the fact that her area of transcendence, as we call it, her purpose, was being a Roomba teacher. And I remember her showing it to me, her analysis, with a look of horror on her face. And it all made sense. It was exactly along the lines of her values, exactly along the lines of her aptitudes and interests. And she said, look, it keeps on saying, roomba teacher, every single way I cut this. And I said, what is the problem? And she said, I can't be a Roomba teacher. I have an mba. And I said, was there some legislation about that? Like, kind of trying to make it lighter? And she said, no, I just can't do this. This is not what an MBA does. What will my parents say? I mean, this is not. And she was sort of talking about her own identity, having gotten this mba. And this was expectations rearing its mane, its head at. And she went off, and it was some kind of management consulting job. And she did not become a Roomba teacher. I'm gonna guess that in 25 years, she might be. But she just let the horsemen of expectations ride away with that very, very real purpose that she had. And I'm gonna tell you that economic security also got in there for her, but it was really about the expectations she had for herself and that her parents had. I have another story about this. It's not about a student. It's about somebody who was. I met in my private practice, and he came from a family of professionals. His sister, his parents were. And his sister went on and she got a degree. She became a doctor in Arizona. And he wanted to become a doctor like her. But he had this small problem which is he fainted at the sight of blood. He couldn't give blood, he couldn't look at blood. This is kind of a non starter for doctors. He went on and got his degree in biology. Anyway, how he managed it, I don't know. And then he just kept on taking jobs in like pharmaceuticals and medical devices. And he just wasn't very good at any of it. And he was miserable. And then he became unemployed after 10 years. And his parents kept on saying to me, we have no expectations of you. Just get it job. And he was unemployed. And one day he went to go pick up a friend from high school who was working at Pep Boys as a mechanic. And in the window it says, we will pay you to train. And he thought, okay, well, I just need money. I'll go get trained and I'll never work a day in my life at Pep Boys. And so he owns three franchises now. Okay, who knew that he was born to be a mechanic. He loved it. The minute he got his hands on a car, he loved it. You know, he had to fight off his expectations there, which was, wait, I was supposed to be a doctor, that didn't work out and now I'm a mechanic. But once he bought into it and once he said, why do I care what other people think? And it really wasn't other people. It was like, what do I think? The expectations I had for myself once, once he let go of them, he is so happy and fulfilled now. All right? And I love that story because it shows you how. How expectations can ruin our lives. And I'm so glad he said goodbye to that horseman and, and, and galloped into his real Life. All right, 30. 30 is expedience. Expedience is the sneakiest of the horsemen. Because we are so good at rationalizing things are. This is when we suppress our values because it's just easier that way. I had a student who called me this week. She's going into banking because they recruited her. Now her top two values, as she told me, were eudaimonia. That's pleasure and self care, leisure, right? And family centrism. That's family first, second, third. Those are her top two values. And she's going to into investment banking where you have no fun, never see your family, and work 100 hours a week. And I said to her, can I ask you a Question. Why are you going into investment banking? Is it for the money? And she said, no. You know, they recruit here on campus, and they, you know, they came and they, you know, they made me the offer. She just did it because it was the line of least resistance. It was the job that came and got her, not the job she went and found according to her values or aptitudes and her interests. You can fall into so many jobs for expedients. You can fall into so many places to live because of expedients. I've seen people who have the value of scope, meaning they love excitement and even to the point of chaos. They love the new. They love new experiences. They love cities. People with high scope often love cities. And they end up living in the suburbs because it's easier to unload your groceries with a driveway. And, you know, expedience is my fear for Madeline that she's just going to stay in this job as a barista because it's easier than leaving it. It's easier than making that big jump into marketing, which is going to be harder. And she can just tell herself it will just be good for my reputation. I'll just do it for a while, and it will sound legit to herself. And that is how expedience works. It just wraps its sneaky little legs around us, and it keeps us away from living our value.

So the fourth and final E is events. And this is when life just pulls us away from living our values inexorably. Sometimes events drag us away because spouses get sick and parents get sick or a kid goes off the rails. We've all experienced these things, or many of us have. So events are actually the horsemen that almost. That almost took me away from my life of values, actually my whole life. And this happened to me. So it happened when Jack died. So Jack died March 1, 20, 20, 11pm at night. And we were all with him. And we knew. It was obviously, we knew that he was gonna die. We had a year to plan. And it happened two weeks before COVID hit. And so we were sort of reeling from it. We had a funeral. 20,000 people went to his funeral. So it was right before COVID hit. And then Covid came, and everybody left New York. It was like, you know, it was like a war, right in my family. We went upstate, and I had all my kids with me, with their spouses. Everyone was gonna be with me anyway. In this month. After he died, we went state. And then we all hibernated during COVID and I was hibernating because I was grieving as well. And then the world started to come back about a year and a half later, as you all might recall, and everybody started to go back to their lives. But I didn't. I didn't. My kids left, and I was up there alone with my dogs, taking one long walk after another. I had nothing to do. I didn't know what to do with myself. And I thought, the events of my life have taken me away from who I want to be, and it's too hard to swim upstream to go get that life back. And it's. I'm not kidding. I mean, me, values expert, a person who'd written about careers and studied values. A person who had this, like, concept and theory around living by our values. I almost let events take me away from my values of scope and radius. Radius being the value to change the world and work, centrism and achievement. I was about as far away from those values, all of my core values. I was about as far away as you could get from them, literally and figuratively. I was walking in the woods with my dogs. And in this period, I hope my kids are not listening to this because it will give them ptsd. But in this period, I started adopting dogs in hospice who were at shelters. Their families typically dropped them off and said, this dog is going to die. And they would bring them to no Kill shelters. And I went around adopting them so that they would have their final weeks with a human being. And my therapist at the time told me I was working out my grief over and over again. Whatever. It was very. It was great for the dogs, but not particularly great for me. That's what I was doing. And then I started to have this excuse, I can't leave the dogs. Well, then the final one died. I went through a lot of these dogs, and my kids finally said to stop. And when Miley died, finally, I was back just to my healthy dogs. And thank God I got the.

Courage, strength.

Inspiration, kicking the butt from God. I don't know what it was to go into New York and go to NYU and get myself in front of the Dean and say, I have an idea for a class called Becoming youg.

But I almost let events take me away. I almost let my own values be suppressed because the Horsemen are real. Which brings me to my final point, which certainly applies more to Laurie than Madeline, but it applies to a lot of people because I get it all the time. So what happens is that one of the Horsemen gallops off with your values, and by the time you notice.

You'Re afraid that you can't get it back. You think, is it too late? That's what you're wondering. Is it too late to jump off the horseman who's galloping off with my life? Is it too late to reclaim my direction and start again? I must get it. Is it too late to reinvent question every day in my DMs? And my thought every time I hear it is, how could it be too late? You're still alive. I mean, think of it this way. I have a story about this. So many stories today. One day I was going out to Brooklyn because I was going to have Ethiopian food with my kids out in Brooklyn. And I got on the three instead of the G. Don't ask me how it happened, actually. Okay, ask me how it happened. It happened because I think I know the subway so well, all right? And I just was sort of like, oh, I know the subway so well. And I blew it. I got on the wrong train. And I was doing the crossword. That's what I do on the subway. I do the crossword. So I don't make eye contact with anybody. But eventually I realized I was on the wrong chain. And I looked up and I saw the station we were at. And I was like, this is not right. This is not the right train at all.

I had a thought in my mind, started with an shit, I'm on the wrong train. So what did I do? Did I wait another six stations? Did I take it to the end of the line and end up in New Lots Avenue in East New York, which is where I would have gone if I'd stayed on instead of going to Park Slope where I was supposed to be having that delicious Ethiopian food with my kids? No, of course not. I felt dumb. I was mad at myself. I felt like a morn. I got off the next stop and I went back into the city. I had to go all the way back into the city. And I changed trains. And then I went back out and I was late. I was late for dinner. The whole trip took twice as long, and I wasn't loving myself during it. And I just thought.

You made a mistake, Susie. Now you got to fix the mistake. And anyway, it was a really great story at dinner, and everyone had a good laugh, and I made sure they understood the metaphor of it. And I. But I got where I wanted to go. I just love this analogy. I have ridden on the back of every single horseman in my life. I have. I have. But, you know, I actually remember coming back on that train from the wrong train from Brooklyn. And actually there's a point where the subway comes above ground and it was light again. And I thought, I'm going to get off this train and I'm going to get myself going back in the right direction. And I don't care how late I am, I am still here and I'm still going to dinner because it's good and I'm be with people I love and it's going to be great when I get back to where I want to go.

So in all of our lives, there are just so many times when we cannot help it, when accidents happen. You get on the wrong train, it's an accident.

But we cannot let our life be accidental. Overall. We can't. So, Laurie, get off that train and get on the right one. Go, go, go, go. It's going to be a little bit of a mess and it's going to be uncomfortable. It'll be worth it. Authenticity is always worth it. That's a blanket statement and it's true. And Madeline, go get on the right train now. Go and catch it right now. It's early and it's going to be great. It's going to be great for both of you, actually, because Mary Oliver was right. You have just one wild and precious life. But it doesn't happen by accident.

Unless you let it.

Becoming youg is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Newsome of Magnificent Noise. Our production staff includes Muskaan Nagpal and Kristen Muller, with help from Elisa Zinn, Hallie Reiner, Maddie Paul and Tanya Jogi. I'm your host, Susie Welch, and this is becoming.