Can We Really Ever Write Our Own Stories?

Are you gonna smooth your hair? No, I mean, it's quite fuzzy because of the rain. Just. Yeah, there you go.

Okay. All right. You need to relax. You don't look relaxed.

I'm totally relaxed. Literally. I was showing my office my, like, professional headshots, and our intern goes, you look really mean. And I was like, okay, I've got.

The camera does not lie.

Well, you just heard the true, unvarnished back and forth with me and my daughter Sophia, who's here in the studio today for this podcast of Becoming you. And she's here because she's back by popular demand. And today's a really interesting podcast. Oh, they're all interesting. All of my podcasts are interesting. Wouldn't you agree? Because you listen to them so closely.

They're scintillating.

Yeah. Thank you so much. All right, look, I'm a professor at NYU Stern School of Business, and at nyu, I teach a class in management, which I love teaching, true, full management. But I teach this class, Becoming youg, which, once again, is based on the premise that your purpose lies at the intersection of your values, your deeply held beliefs, your aptitudes, what you're uniquely good at, and let's say it all together, your economically viable interests. I have been talking a lot on this podcast. Well, I always talk about what is your purpose? What were you meant to do? What is the meaning of your life? Because that's what the Becoming youg methodology is all about. It's helping you find your purpose. Right. But I have also been talking in the last couple of pods about the book, because the book came out in May. But I decided that this podcast. We're going to talk about a book. In fact, we're going to talk about two books that are absolutely not mine, but books that had a huge influence on me and who I am. And I'm glad you're here, because I'm going to talk about these books and why they're super important to me and to the Becoming you methodology. Look, there's a lot of premises underlying Becoming you. You know, why did I come up with this methodology? Why do I believe this methodology works? And they all come back to what I believe. Right? How can I separate myself from this methodology? And so that is why we're here today, talking about two books. But you are going to be the truth teller in the room to say, like, am I telling the truth? Are these books at my core and the core of what I believe? At first, I thought I was going to do five books, but the podcast can't be 750 hours. And so I'm going to focus on two books. And one of the cool things about you being here today, Sophia, one of the many cool things is that you've not read these books. And so in that way, you may be representing the listeners here who've not read them. But, you know, Sophia, before we get going, why don't you just say hi to the Becoming youg Audience and tell us a little bit about yourself since you're going to be in here in the studio today for the pod.

Hi, everyone.

What do you do for a living?

I work in casting and, like, in TV and film. I mean, I don't. Right now I work at a modeling agency.

Where do you fall in the birth order?

I'm second in line, but I like to think that I'm first because I'm an eldest daughter, so.

You are an eldest daughter. You have eldest daughter energy?

100%.

Are you going to come for me in this podcast?

That's what I'm here for.

Okay. All right, let's do it. All right.

It's a roast, Susie.

Well, let's get going with the first book. You've heard me talk about this book a million, billion times, have you not? It's called the Corrections. It's by the great Jonathan Franz, and it came out in 2001. Do you remember me talking about any kind of specificity?

I remember you just saying it's like one of your favorite books and it's so brilliant. I will also say, yeah, they've tried to adapt it like six times and it never works out.

Really?

Yes.

Sophia's got some inside tea.

No, it's not on the Corrections as a.

As a. As to what they've tried to adapt.

It's like a film and a TV show, and for some reason, and I'm sure many people know more than this, more about this than I do, but it never ends up working out. It always falls apart.

Maybe one day I'll direct it and you can cast it.

Love that. Okay, let's do it tomorrow. So I get employed.

Pinky swear. I know. I'm not currently unemployed.

Please. I mean, I'm currently employed.

Let the record show that I've tried to do becoming you with you how many times every day of my life.

Since I was zero years old.

Okay, okay. And we keep on ending up exactly where you are, which is in casting. That's a problem because casting doesn't have a lot of jobs. Okay, Just a little background before we dive into it. This book actually Caused a scandal when it came out, because Oprah made it her book choice for her book club. And this is a gigantic honor. If you're an author, this is what you go to bed at night dreaming of, that you're going to be in Oprah's book club. And he was a literary writer, a literary author, and he said he was a little bit embarrassed about being Oprah's pick. And she was not amused, as you might imagine. And there was a kerfuffle, and anyway, they made up, and then he went on her show and everything worked out. But for a while, it was quite the story that a literary lion had kind of rebuffed Oprah, which is something you really didn't do in 2001. Probably shouldn't do it today, either. I think what he said was her book club offerings were schmaltzy and the corrections. This book is interesting because it is a work of. It's a literary masterpiece. It won the National Book Award. It was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. It is a literate masterpiece, but it also happens to be an incredible page turner, and it's hysterically funny. Okay, let me just describe to you what it's about. And, you know, I wrote a little something, so bear with me. This book is like a sweeping narrative. It's about a family, a Midwestern family that is dealing with modern life. The name of the family is the Lamperts. They're from Ohio. And the sort of central organizing principle of the book is they're all going to go home for Christmas. It's three adult children and the parents, and they're gonna go home as families do, even when families are dysfunctional and a mess. Why do you have that expression on your face when I say the words dysfunctional family?

I have no expression on my face. Okay? I'm neutral. I'm neutral.

Okay? So they're a dysfunctional family, as all families are. And they are driven to go home. And each one of them is in some form of denial about their failure or their pain or their hurt. And you follow along with this family, and the family is kind of coming apart at the seams. The father's name is Alfred. The mother's name is Enid. You fall in love with these adult children who are so flawed. And so actually, before we dive in, we have a little tiny clip of Jonathan Franzen himself talking about this book that he wrote.

You have a. You have a family where the father, authoritarian, powerful figure, is suddenly falling apart. It's a crisis for the family and all the kids who are grown living on the east coast really just don't want to deal. And meanwhile, the unfortunate mother in the family has to live with this man. And because her present reality is so terribly unpleasant, she fixes her hopes on bringing the family together for that one last Christmas. Yes, that's the. That's the simple conceit at the heart of the book.

And also it is the relationship among all of them. I mean, of course, one child loved the father more than the mother. Another child loves the mother more than the father.

And the kids are all, in varying degrees, kind of east coast sophisticates. And the parents have one or both feet in a much more traditional, well ordered heartland society. And there are all sorts of misunderstandings and conflicts there. The mother thinks that the daughter is a snob. The daughter does seem to have a problem with rolling her eyes at what the mother says. So, yeah, it's a family, you know.

So I want to say that the title of this book is very important because one of the major things, again, the title being the corrections. One of the strongest themes of this book is that we spend our lives trying to correct past failures and hurts and trauma.

And I related so much to that that you absolutely spend your life trying to undo or rewrite the script that was laid out for you. And I was gripped by this family.

And their trials and travails and how each person had their own way of failing under the pressures of modern life and yet felt very committed to looking like they weren't failing. The book, which tells this heartbreaking story of this family trying to correct each person, trying to correct their mistakes, their errors, their traumas, their dysfunction. The book's final conclusion, in a very bittersweet and poignant way, is you cannot do that. You can't. Your past, the narrative of your past, is the predictor of your future. And you can't extract yourself from the story written for you by your family.

And I don't believe it. That's the whole thing about it. I don't believe it. I believe in reinvention. I believe about. I believe you could tear up the script of the life written for you. And that's look, that's becoming you. Tear up the script. You can invent your own life, figure out your values, figure out your aptitudes, figure out what interests you. Write your own script. I think that the book so resonated with me because I was like, I am not doing this. Does that sound like me?

Yeah, I just wonder if it's.

I mean, I think that you can rewrite your life and reinvent yourself. But isn't it. I mean, your family is still in you.

Yeah.

And you're still of them.

Yeah.

So at what point do you sort of. I don't know, how much do you let that affect you? How much do you fully disown and how much do you just say, look, these are the things that are a part of me and I may not like them about myself, but it's a great point.

I mean, this book for me, twisted my heart all around because it has this theme that you can't escape your past. But let's talk about the family that was making me have all these feelings that I wanted to rewrite. Okay. So sometimes when I explain our family, Sophia, to people, I say, you know how two species can't mate, Like a squirrel and a cow cannot mate. But they, you know. Right. And like my parents, your Nani and Poppy, were like, from different species. They were just the most absolutely opposite. You know, Poppy's family were these erudite, very sophisticated Jewish immigrants who came to the United States and started a very successful company and fancied themselves to be part of fancy society. They had a fancy apartment and a house in Asbury park where the legend was that the household help wore roller skates.

Right.

Because the house was so big.

Yeah.

Even you heard that legend, huh?

Oh, of course, yeah.

Whereas Nani was from a tough, street fighting Sicilian family filled with dark secrets and, like, also crazy legends about people, you know, insulting a sister, never being seen again. Oh, my God. It was just nothing but drama on Nani's side of the family.

Yeah. Yep.

And I don't know, I think you've seen the pictures of their wedding where every single person was wearing black. I mean, there was no love lost. And so it actually, when my mom and dad got married, when Ani Poppy got married, what followed was kind of 60 years of like absolute chaos. I think it's a huge open question, can we rewrite? And I think this is an interesting thing for you to think about if you're listening in on this right now, is how much of your past do you want to write out? And becoming you invites you into process of self determination. I love that about the methodology. It says, you know, there's three ways of living. There's default, where you just live out, you bounce around and you just react and you just do the best you can with what you're handed. That's the life that all the corrections people are living. Then there's deliberation where you start saying, I don't want that. I think I have a theory of myself. I think I have a theory of my life. And then there's living by design. I think the arc of my life is going from default to design. And the correction says, you can't do that.

Right. I'm just thinking. I guess it's like.

Because you're saying it's about the narrative of your life. But I guess my question would be.

I think people fall a lot into.

Wanting to rewrite or reinvent themselves from their family, and then the family becomes the scapegoat and, like, the blame for every hardship. And it's this victim narrative.

Right.

And I think we can recognize that our families maybe are not exactly. That they're not like us or we don't want to be like them.

Right.

But I do think that, like, you know, you mentioned Nonnie was really tough, and you're really tough. And so I'm not saying, like.

That you're tough in the way that she is, but I do think that it's okay to also say, you know, parts of my family I've tried to get rid of, maybe, but they're still in me.

Yeah. I think. And I've said this a million times, you've heard me say, amnesty for all parents.

You know, isn't that convenient?

Yes, it is convenient, isn't it? But I think you gotta. At a certain point, you gotta forgive and forget.

Forget and rewrite. Yes, I completely agree.

Forgive, forget and rewrite. And so the correction says you can't do that. And that's why I found this book to be so fascinating. I do think that the work of my life for the past.

Number of years that led up to writing, becoming you and creating the methodology has been a dialogue with myself about how much you can be the author of your life. And one of the slides I have up in my class is, it's better to be the author of your life than the editor. All right. But there's an asterisk that says no shade on editors. I mean, I myself was an editor. An editor's a beautiful thing to have. And, you know, sometimes, Sophia, I feel like you're the editor of my life. I think all my kids have been the editor of my life, and for the better.

How so?

Well, I mean, I think that you keep me real. And I mean, before we had this conversation, you said, I want you just to be real, Mom. I want you to be authentic. I want a real conversation with you. You say this kind of thing to me. All the time.

Yeah.

So I appreciate you for that. Appreciate you.

Thanks.

Before we move on from the Corrections, I want to say one thing, that they do make a very true point, which is that you cannot correct or change what you do not acknowledge. Yeah. You know, and that if you want to change something about your family system or about you, you have to have this kind of brutal self awareness and say, I'm broken. I did something wrong. I am sometimes ungenerous or whatever, and this self awareness. And I have tried so hard to have radical candor in all of my understanding of myself. And frankly, sometimes you accuse me of beating myself up too much because of that. But I. The problem is it kind of. Sometimes people bleeds over to other people, and I'm very brutally honest. But this notion from the corrections that we need to be radically candid with ourselves, about ourselves, I do believe that that is a fundamental tenet of becoming you, because it is something, I think, that allowed me to reinvent. And so, I mean, I think that you've experienced a life of radical candor.

Yeah. I mean, like, to say the very least. Yeah.

Maybe too radically candid.

Yeah. Well, I mean, like, it all. It's. It all worked out, but I think it's hard to undo some of that stuff.

Amnesty for all parents.

Yeah, Right, Exactly.

I can.

I can say that. I can say that was tough, and you don't want to hear it, so.

I know. I know it. I mean, I want to.

Yeah. No, you know it. Right.

Okay. So I think that. But I think that this idea that you can't find. Fix what you refuse to acknowledge is a very, very true one. I think you cannot fix what you refuse to acknowledge, that if you want to reinvent yourself, if you want to change yourself, if you want to pivot in a job, if you want to have a different kind of relationship, if you want to, you've got to acknowledge and own it. You know, it's like.

That'S hard. That's our life's work.

I have a question.

Yes.

So when you're saying to rewrite the narrative that my family wrote for me or to rewrite the story, are you talking about specifically, like, your. The path of your life? Like, what. What your family would have, like, had you become? Or are you talking about qualities that are in you, or what are you. What are you saying when you mean, when you say, like, the story?

What a great question. I think that I came from a family that had a culture of chaos.

Right. So you're talking about what the.

A Culture of being hurt, of men hurting women and women flaming out because of it. That was the culture of all the aunts and so forth. And I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to be constantly being hurt. I wanted a loving relationship, which I got with Jack. I had the marriage that I wanted, and I, you know, I gave up a lot for it. But I.

And I. I think our lives were exciting but not chaotic in the way in. In the. In the environment that I came from myself. That's what I wanted to rewrite. Some families just have a culture of pain, and I just didn't want that.

Yeah.

I wanted a culture of joy. And I think that, like, when I think about what's good about becoming you, I think, okay, you're going to get your purpose. That doesn't guarantee happiness, as I like to say, but it's a lot more likely. Yeah.

Yeah, I agree.

All right, we're gonna take a short break, and then we'll come back and talk about the second book that I feel is so fundamental to not just me, but to becoming you. I'm Susie Welch. We'll be right back.

All right, we're back. I'm Susie Welch, and I'm here.

Stop doing that. Stop doing that. That's like weird voices and stuff. Serious.

It's so weird. Hi, we're back. I'm Susie Welch. This Is Becoming youg. Our special guest in the studio today is none other than Sophia Welch, my daughter. And she's here to keep it real while we talk about these two books that have been incredibly and profoundly important to me and I guess, ultimately to becoming you. Hi, Sophia.

Hi.

All right, so the second book is something you heard me talk about it. It's Peace Like a River. The authors, Leif Enger, who was a reporter in Minnesota before he wrote it, and unbelievably, this book was his first novel out of the Gate. He wrote this perfect book, a huge and important book to me because of its central theme, which is that people are complicated. That's what it says. It says there's just no black and white in this world, that people are complicated. They're messy. They're good and bad in the same day. And that, by the way, is the point. Peace Like a River. I am the sworn enemy of platitudes and bromides and people who try to boil life down to very simple things. This is why I call all the books about positive psychology. This is why I call it the Happiness Industrial complex. Books that tell you how to be. I just don't buy it at all, as you know. And I think that the truth is so much grayer and harder and more complicated than that. And I am in, you know, I'm technically in the advice business. Becoming you is to my everlasting frustration is on the self help list. And I, yeah, I guess it is self help. I want you to be able to help yourself. But I think it's more self discovery, not self help because I think you help yourself when you know yourself. And I just think that people are paradoxes. Waking up in the morning and only gets more messy as the day goes on. And then they go to bed. Complete messy mess balls. But let's set the scene cause you've not read it. And it's about a family. It takes place in the 1960s in rural Minnesota. Rural Minnesota has an area called the Badlands. And it's as interesting thing. It's narrated by an 11 year old. His name is Reuben Land. And the book has got a terrible, violent opening contention, which is that there's been these two boys who have been harassing the Land family. They've been dreadful to them. There's a. Some kind of hurt that went on. And one day these two terrible teenage punks are about to break into the family home. And the older brother, not the narrator's older brother, lies for them in wait. And he shoots them both dead as they walk through the door. He's arrested, he. He's put into jail and he escapes from jail. And the rest of the story is the family trying to get to him to protect him at the same time that the law is trying to get to him to kill him on sight. And you see this family now go and try to protect their son and you're sort of torn because you sympathize with the older boy. He was protecting the family, but did he have to shoot them both in cold blood? And you start off at the beginning of the story thinking there are good people and there are bad people. But by the end of the story, everybody's a little bit good and everybody's a little bit bad.

Well, first I just want to say thank you for bringing such a light reading to the table.

Also, I saw the books that you were going to talk about and I'm sure glad that that didn't go down.

What were the like? They were the.

It was like the history of humans.

Yes. Guns, Germs and steel. That might be for another podcast. Let us know. All right, so go ahead.

Okay. So, yeah, I don't think that you've always been like this. I think when I was younger.

Things felt really black and white.

I think that you're not wrong that when you were growing up, there were times. And I think that this is a lot of parents, we try to explain the world to you, and you don't want to say to your kids as they're growing up, well, everything's really messy and complicated out there. You're trying to give your kids something to hang on to. And also, I will say this. You're trying very hard to teach your kids character. And so a lot of the sweeping statements I made to you were like, it is wrong to do X, it is right to do Y. Because I felt like when I was raising you guys, I felt I had one job, and the job was to teach you what it was to have good character. And so you do make a lot of sweet. But I'm in the absolute business and activity these days of helping people through very rough patches in their life where they're trying to figure out who they are. And I've been deeply sensitized by. By teaching becoming you and writing about becoming you to the layers of nuance.

No, I think. I absolutely agree with that. I also think it's easier for things to be black and white when you're speaking to and about your children. You know, it's very easy to pick out, this is what you're doing wrong, and this is what you're doing right. And this is bad, and this is good because they're your kids. And so you are gonna have a lot less nuance with them. Maybe.

I would say that. I would say that this is also maybe a function of age.

I think that there's also that as you get older.

I think I have not gotten older. I think I've gotten softer.

Yes.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you for agreeing. And also. What?

Older.

I am older.

I mean, yeah. Or you've got.

But I like to say I'm newer every day. Yeah, I may be old, but I'm newer every day, baby.

Okay, don't say that.

Don't say baby, baby, baby, baby, baby.

Continue.

Continue. So obnoxious.

Okay.

Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby. So I love peace like a river because.

By the end of the book, everybody is a little bit gray. And in fact, let's just listen to a little bit of Leif Anger talking about that. He's actually doing an interview at a library in Minnesota. And the interviewer observes to him, there's no black and white in this. And here's how he answers.

I really didn't want to write anybody in a completely evil light.

And I also wanted the good characters to have their flaws. What happens to Ruben, who is 11 years old, is that of course he thinks any enemy of the family is a black hearted human being with no redeeming quality whatever. But Reuben finds out over the course of the book that no one is like that.

Not even Jape Waltzer, who is as close to a genuinely evil character as this book contains. Even Jape addresses Reuben in a certain way that makes him feel grown up and proud. And he has his good qualities, even though in some ways he's a complete psychopath. That's really how things are. As you get to know people, whether they're real or whether they're characters in a novel, you see that they are not completely bad.

I want to just say the idea that human messiness exists really, really resonates with me.

This is not on topic. I want to talk about something that is that you mentioned before.

Let's hear it.

I want you to talk a little bit more about this happiness industrial complex. I want you to talk about why they're damaging, because I think they're damaging.

Okay. Well, I want to say that in the happiness industrial complex there are some authors who are profoundly great, who say great things and everyone should read. And I want to call out Gretchen Rubin, who's written a lot about happiness, and Scott Barry Kaufman, who also writes a lot about positive psychology. These are both people who are true brilliant minds. And I don't want anybody to think I would ever lump them in with this. But there are a lot of books out there that are quite, quite thin. You might be able to put your hand right through their content, which are just sort of filled with psychobabble. And I do think that they can be. The ones that I find to be the most dangerous are the ones that tell you to manifest. Okay? They literally tell you that if you wish for something hard enough, you're going to like manifest a job. I mean, becoming you might just be the absolute antidote. The idea that you could manifest yourself a freaking job. Do you know how hard it is to get or to find your purpose? I mean, these things just do not partner or partner.

Manifestation is my least favorite. It's delusional.

It's delulu. Yeah, okay. And so I absolutely live in a fear of anybody ever putting becoming you in that category. But becoming you is scientifically validated, research based. I've written my PhD thesis about it. I mean, one of the reasons I was desperate to get my PhD was because I wanted the book to have the heft of real research. Because the people who just spout bromides and platitudes about, like. Like, will yourself happy.

Yeah.

They must have never been sad. I mean, will yourself happy. Yeah.

So true.

I feel like it's fed to young women and young men.

Yeah.

And, you know, get to take a cold bath and. And you're going to be more manly. And it's just. God, it's just more. It's more complicated than that. Again, it's about the oversimplification of stuff.

Yes, I think that's exactly what it is.

And Peace Like a River is about, you know, we don't oversimplify. And becoming you is. You can't oversimplify. Becoming you is going to be quite easy for some people, and it's going to be very, very hard for other people.

Yeah.

But depending on where they are. And I'm sorry, I live in the real world. I live in the real world, so let's leave it there. Thank you for asking that fabulous question. Let me think about how we wrap this up.

Sorry, my boss is texting me.

Okay, answer your boss. This podcast is being paused by Sophia Texts her boss. All right, Sophia, finish texting your boss.

Sorry. Done.

Okay, so thank you for being on with me. I love talking about these books. Let us know at hello, Susie Welch.com if you'd like me to talk about books or anything else, but I'm really glad you're here. And again, becoming you is about the two themes we talked about today. It's about reinvention. While acknowledging your past, you can't get rid of it. But also with the forceful theme that you cannot change what you do not acknowledge.

Yeah.

Peace Like a River is about.

How complicated everyone is. You're complicated and I'm complicated. And everyone listening is complicated. Doesn't mean that we can't have lives of design, have lives of meaning and authenticity. We have to acknowledge the truth, which is there's no hack. I'm gonna leave it there. Thank you, Sophia, for being here.

Thanks for having me.

This is Becoming youg.

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 you.