Change is bad.

All right, everybody. Hello from the Becoming youg Studios. I have grievous news for you. Grievous news. Pierre's not on his chair because Pierre is out on a walk. And I have had so many experiences this summer, going to events, going to parties, going to weddings, where I walk in the room and people ask me how Pierre is. Pierre's fame is far and wide. And in fact, I was at an event and a person came up to me, and they not only asked me how Pierre was, but they said to me, is Pierre on a chair okay? Which is like an inside joke of my Instagram feed, so. And my TikTok. So there you go. He's not here. I'm sorry about that. This is becoming you. A podcast which is based on a methodology that I have created and that I teach at NYU Stern School of Business, which is a way to figure out what the answer to the question, what should I do with my life? And also gives you a lifelong tool for understanding yourself and thinking about your career and taking a path towards your area of transcendence, which is the intersection of what you want to do, what you can do, and what you should do. That's what Becoming youg is all about. But this podcast tends to be about a lot of other things. And we do mention animals a lot. I don't know why. Maybe because I love them so much. But I want to start today with a story about something that just happened to me that was so profound that I cried like a baby. I know that if you listen to this podcast, you get the sense that I cry all the time. I don't actually cry. Okay, I guess I actually do because I cry in class. I cry when I see friends. Anyway, this was an event. I have had a crazy summer. It was a summer with almost no vacation in it. Because why? Because I was writing the Becoming youg book coming out in May, and actually the date May 6th. Put it on your calendars, everyone. It's on mine. But I was writing the book and I didn't get to where I usually go for the summer, which is this amazing island of Nantucket. I know some of you are listening from other parts of the world, and Nantucket's not familiar to you the way it is to people in the United States, but it's this historic island. It was a whaling island, and now it's a they vacation island off the coast of Massachusetts. I knew nothing of Nantucket till I met my late husband, Jack, and I. He said, guess what? We're going to start Vacationing in Nantucket and I was like, what? And off we went. And I. Since then, it's my 25th summer on that island and I have made so many friends and my husband's buried there, so it's very precious island to me. So I only got there for two weeks this summer. That was my full vacation. And guess what? I know you'll be shocked. I did not actually vacate while I was there because I was doing stuff for the book and whatever, running around, but it was super important for me to get there. Why? Because there is this very special thing about the island and I've never missed it and I wasn't going to miss it this year. So on the island there is this golf club. It's called Sankety Head Golf Club. It's a tiny, quiet.

Conservative, old fashioned golf club. The kind of place I never stepped foot in my entire life. I didn't even know golf clubs like this existed.

But they.

Then I married a golfer and I became a member there by marrying Jack, and then I remain a member there. And since 1930, this little club has every year brought in caddies to help the golfers from underserved communities. Okay? They've brought in boys from around the country to carry the bags and they teach them how to play golf. And then over the years, very quietly and with no fanfare, they have given away, literally over the years, millions and millions and millions of, of dollars in college scholarships to the boys who come there. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of boys. And they do this with, as I said, absolutely no self promotion. It is the best kind of giving. It's quiet, but it's life changing for the kids. Well, a couple of years ago, I don't know, 20 years ago, I started going to the caddie program in the summer and I would talk to the boys about careers and how you actually build a career. And they were. These kids are from 13 to 20 years old. They come from all over the country. They've never seen the likes of a golf, never seen the likes of us, frankly. We are not the community they typically interact with and they are not the type of community we usually interact with. And yet this is a beautiful thing that we come together on this island and the boys learn, they get tutored in SATs, they get tutored in everything. They learn public speaking. And Bill Belichick goes and speaks to them about leadership because he's a member there and so forth and so on. And I go and I talk to them about building a career and how you think about that and I do it every year. And the boys are unrelentingly, unrelentingly sincere and earnest and kind and hard working and they're darling and I love them. And then they do this wacky thing after I speak. They give me a big standing ovation like I've invented gravity. It's very, very encouraging and I love them. I, you know, I have two boys of my own and I think back to them at this age and they were not nearly as hard working and good natured and filled up with such good stuff as these. They've grown up into wonderful men. But these are great, great, great, great kids. And, and I did it again this year. And interestingly this year there was like a long line afterwards and a lot of really deep questions. And these kids are young, but they're struggling. Like my parents want me to do this and I wanna do that. And I'll be the first person in my family to go to college. I'm so scared. What advice can you give me? How do you explain your success? I just wanted to hug each one of them and they are just beautiful kids. Well, every summer at the end of the summer, there's a banquet where they give out the scholarships to all of these kids. They get an envelope and for many of them it's absolutely, for most of them it's absolutely life changing. They get almost their entire tuition paid for. And they've gotten a lot of help preparing themselves to go to these schools. And for the past five years there's been a scholarship in my husband's name that's given to the Caddy with the highest academic achievement. And it's a wonderful scholarship. And, and it was hard for me to get to the island. And I kept on saying, I gotta get there. Cause I've gotta get to the banquet and I've gotta give out that award. And my family was like, why are you putting this stress on yourself? Someone else, one of Jack's good friends, will hand out the award. And I said, I've got to be there. I've gotta be there. So the night rolled around and the moment of truth came. And I got up to give the award. And the wonderful student, this young kid, got up and as I was handing him the award, I was overcome by, with gratitude for being involved in this small way in these boys lives. And I was overcome with affection for the boys. But actually I was also swamped with a feeling of the unspeakable importance of tradition. And we never talk about the upside of the old, right? We're always talking about the new, new, new. Everything's gotta be new. I say all the time, reinvention, Blow yourself up. Start fresh. It's never too late to start again. And we talk about the new, and we talk about the reinvention, and we talk about the. If you don't move forward, you're gonna fall behind. I have said it myself. Gurus say it all the time. You've got to move forward. Blow up the past. The past is bad. A big insult is to call somebody a Luddite when I'm picking on myself. I say, I hate to be a Luddite, okay? But here I was, enmeshed in a tradition that is 94 years old, and I was right at the heart of this tradition of helping this community of boys, and I was contributing to it. And I was just one chapter in a narrative in a book that I hope goes on for another hundred years. And in that one moment, the weight of all the people who wrote the previous chapters was on me. And I was handing this award to this kid, and I thought, I know someday my daughter will be up here giving this award in the next generation when I'm no longer here. And how beautiful that she'll carry it on and that this tradition will go on. And some traditions are really, really, really worth preserving, and some things about the past are really, really, really worth revering. And I just. I'm always talking about reinvention. But I want to say, sometimes it's really good to go back, and sometimes it's really good to stay steady. And sometimes tradition is worth fighting for and worth keeping. I was struck by it, and. And, yes, I did start to cry. And I sat down, and a good friend who was also sitting at the table, who I've known for 30 years, reached over, and I think she just knew what was going on. And she just squeezed both of my hands so tightly, and I tried to hold it together and didn't do that very well, but neither did anybody in that room, because I think everybody felt that we were part of so much bigger than ourselves. So I'd say the new is beautiful. I get it. You know, like that Emily Dickinson quote. I think I quoted it recently. You know, we are not older with the years, but newer every day. New is good, but sometimes so is old. So this is just my little plea that we don't blow up everything. And I'm so happy to be a part of that tradition. And it doesn't make me a Luddite. It just makes me a person who understands that there are really good things about the past that are worth fighting for. And that is where I want to stop this story and move on to the other exciting and hopefully not crybaby parts of the podcast.

All right, we have so many good questions from the community I want you to know. Community, the people who send me questions. I love you. And when I receive a question from you, I'm honored that you're asking me. What have we got? Aliza, you got something. What have we got from the community this time?

Yes. So the first question is in response to the Life doesn't get easier, but you do get stronger videos that you posted.

Yeah.

So this person asked, do you think your life would have turned out differently if you hadn't gotten fired? How did you cope with the loss of the career and life direction that could have been? I understand objectively that life goes on and we will always find our way back up, but the loss often ends up pointing us in a different direction than the one we had planned.

Yes. Very beautiful philosophical question. Would have my life been different if I hadn't gotten fired? Of course. It really would have been. And at the time, it was a public death. I, as I said in the video, I hated it. I was humiliated. It was in the newspaper. I was super embarrassed. I had screwed up, okay? And I made a mistake. I wouldn't have been fired today, by the way. Okay. I got fired because I ended up getting married to a person who I did a story on. And today I would not have been fired for that because I was never lied about it and I told the truth. But whatever. Those were those days. And it happened. And life went on. And I learned a lot. And the main thing I learned was empathy for people who have gotten fired or have screwed up and have fallen down. I had so much sympathy for people after that. And I was like, God, people pick on people when they get fired and, man, it's the worst day of their life. Why are we hating on them? So I'm really glad I learned that lesson. I had to learn it the hard way. But I would say that everything happens for a reason if you let it. Okay, if you say this happened for a reason, because you can just say this happened and it stinks, or you could say it happened. What did I learn? How will I be better? What good can come out of this? How will I change for all the right reasons? So the last part of that question is, how do I cope with the career loss? It wasn't very pretty. I mean, I remember one time I mean, I was like sobbing. If you listen to this podcast, as I've said, like, you just think I'm crying all the time, and it's really not that bad. I remember sobbing in front of Jack like, my life is over. Actually using those words like, my life is over. I'll never work again. I'll never work again. Now, I thought that because when they fired me, my boss said to me, you will never work again. That's what she actually said to me. That was nice of her, wasn't it? She was a unpleasant person, and I don't know why you would ever fire saying that to somebody. I mean, my big crime, by the way, was falling in love. But I would say that I cope with it by leaning on people around me and fighting through it. And I had good people who helped me. And also, I've mentioned this before, I am a faithful person, and my faith helped me a lot also. And some people have that to access and others don't. But just to be in complete candor, that was very helpful to me that I believe there was a higher power and that I appealed to that higher power to help me. So I. I did go on. And it was not long after that that I got my job at oh, the Oprah Magazine. So life did go on. And everybody who saw me sobbing that my life would never go on had a good laugh. Thank you for that question. Keep sending them. All right, we have another question from the community.

Okay, the next question. This person says, hi, Susie. I've been listening to your podcast since day one. I have a year left of college, and my dream is to be a successful business owner that provides beautiful experiences to other. Martha Stewart is one of my secret mentor crushes. And to reference the scale of success I wish to pursue, do you think it's more important to find a postgrad job that will hone my business skills like sales or management, or a job that will familiarize myself with my industries of interest, like event planning, interior design, or wellness. I just feel a little lost regarding which steps to take next to set myself up for success. Thanks for the help. Oh.

First of all, I love you and I love that you admire Martha Stewart and that you are thinking that big. That's fantastic. She is one of my secret mentor crushes. I actually use her in class as an example of somebody who. Whose life I if I trade lives with anybody, and I don't necessarily want to trade lives with anybody because I love my life, but I would trade lives with her because I think her life has been spectacular. And I think she's an amazing role model. And she's not had an easy life, and she's had some bumps in the road, we might say. And she is an amazing person. I really, really respect her. So we're shoulder to shoulder on that, my friend. So I would say that you're asking such a great question. You want to supply or you want to provide beautiful experiences, and you're wondering, really, should I go do something that teaches me about my economically viable opportunities or my aptitudes? I think that's what you know your values, it sounds like to me. And I guess my question for you is, can't you do both? Isn't there a way to do both? Is there a way to go work for Martha Stewart? Okay? I mean, is there a way to write her and say, I want to be you, I will come and do any job you've got just to be in the glow of your aura. And I want to learn. And I think that you know enough about what you want to do that I would try to sort of get as close to your industries that you're interested in and then start looking for the jobs. I think you can, because you're so focused and you are so directed. I would try to do both at the same time. I know it sounds like a lot. I also would focus on people who are doing what you do. Like Martha Stewart. She's not the only person whose jobs you should be looking at, but maybe there's somebody else in that sphere who. Who sort of. I mean, there are a lot of lifestyle influencers and content creators, and you should identify your top 20 that you love and just try to get jobs with them. And I wouldn't say look at their websites to see, oh, if they've got job postings. It's just usually they don't. I mean, I would DM them. I would write them at their websites and just say, here's who I am. Here's what I want to do with my life. Here's what I can bring to you. Because a lot of times in an organization, what you want are people who are true believers in what you're doing. You can train for almost everything else, but that love and passion for what you're doing, you can't train that into somebody. And so some savvy content creator might pick that up off of you and give you a chance. So good luck to you and keep us posted, please.

We've got some corporate jargon. We've got a chock a block podcast okay, so stick with us here. All right? What is the corporate jargon you need me to decode? Plaz.

The first one is, but how far is this going to move the needle?

Oh, God. How far is this going to move the needle? As I've said before, all corporate jargon is just another way of saying shut the F up. Okay? And this is another one that saying, like, basically what they're saying to you is, your idea is okay, but it's not going to change anything. Okay? That idea is just not going to move the needle. Like, why can't you just say, I think your idea is. Is fine, but it's not going to change anything. It's not going to make any appreciable difference Next. Okay? Because what they're doing is they're pushing it back on you to answer that question, how far is this going to move the needle? And then you're the one who's to sit there and say, not very far, I guess. And so why can't they just be, you know, you've put yourself out there. Let them be the. Put themselves out there. And so they may say ask you that question. And if you don't have an immediate answer, you may ask back, really? Do you think it's not going to move the needle? Why don't you tell me what your opinion is? But that is just about putting it in your face that they don't think your idea has got enough impact. So yet again, jargon to cover up the truth. But what else do we have? Another piece of jargon?

Yes. The next one is let's start with the low hanging fruit.

Yeah, okay. I mean, this is a little like boil the ocean in that. I don't hate it all that much. Because what they're saying, obviously with low hanging fruit is let's take our easy wins. Okay? Let's just quickly just do what's easy right away and then we'll do the hard stuff. Once again, you could just say, let's do the easy stuff first and then move on to the hard stuff. It's not too bad in general. Low hanging fruit always kind of feels like cheating to me. It's like, let's just quickly do what's really simple to do and we'll get to the hard stuff later. Which of course is not. That's part of business. All right? But as soon as you hear low hanging fruit, you know something hard is coming down the road. You don't know what it is, but the hard stuff's gonna come soon. Brace yourself.

All Right. It's that time of the podcast where I talk about my secret mentor crush. This is a friend of mine. Her name is Gretchen Shimek. She's 78 years old. And I told her I was going to do this, and she said she would be honored. I've known Gretchen for 30 years about. And I met her on the island of Nantucket, which I was just talking about. I only see her a few weeks a year, and this year I only saw her two times. And she's my Bible study teacher. And I say this in no way understanding that the vast majority of people listening to this do not have a faith tradition. And that's perfectly cool with me. But I would say that the most important part of her is that she's a teacher, and she's 78 years old, and she is constantly learning and constantly growing and so engaged. And I love her for so many reasons because. But the main reason I love her is apparently she can read my mind. And I mean, it's very good to have a mentor who can read your mind, because there have been times I've been in class and she's been going on and on about something, and I will be sitting there and I will be having a very negative or contrary thought. I'll be disagreeing with her about something because she's strongly opinionated. And I know this will come as a shock to my regular listeners. So am I. And. And I will be having a contrary thought. And I don't know how she does it, but she looks right in my face and then she says, I know you don't agree with that, Susie. So either I'm wearing it or she's just psychic. But here's what I really love about her. She calls people on it when she disagrees with them. She never tries to smooth it over. And she has called me on my BS so many times and really been in my face, because, look, you know what you talk about in Bible study, for those of you who don't go, you talk about really, really big stuff, okay? Like what you believe is right and wrong. So the other day, I was in Bible study with her in Nantucket and a whole slew of women, and we were discussing an interesting theological question, which is, what can prayer really do? Can prayer really move a mountain? Can prayer really heal somebody? And we were discussing this, and there was a wide variety of opinions, and some people were saying, eh, no. And other people saying, prayer can do anything. And there was a great deal of disagreement in the room, and Gretchen was listening to all the disagreement. And then a woman in the room, a young woman, brilliant, happened to know her mom. Very, very smart. Rhodes scholar, kind of. She was a Rhodes scholar. She pipes up with a opinion about what prayer and prayer can and cannot do. The details are not important because we don't need to get into theology here. And I can look at Gretchen's face, and this time I am reading her mind, and I can tell how much she disagrees. Vehemently disagrees. Okay, those of you who don't go to Bible study, I bet you didn't know it was this fun and interesting. And. And I could tell that she totally disagrees on the points. She totally disagrees from a theological and historical perspective. And this young woman is going on and on and making her case very, very passionately. And at one point, I look at Gretchen with the most beautiful smile on her face. She says, I'm just gonna cut you off right there.

And.

And then in the most elegant, compassionate, thoughtful way, she took apart this person's argument point by point by point. She didn't try to smooth it over. She didn't say things like, well, there's room for both of our opinions, or like, oh, I hear you, or all the things we say when we totally disagree with somebody. She took this opportunity to show us all what it looks like to compassionately but strongly disagree with somebody. And I thought, wow, if the whole world could. Could fight that way. And that's what she did. She just took her on and said, I totally disagree with you. If you can imagine two people talking about politics, for instance, with the ability to disagree the way Gretchen demonstrated the proper way to disagree, I just literally could have just crawled over and touched the hem of her skirt. I was so impressed. I want to be just like her. I want to be able to disagree with people. First of all, I want to read people's minds, because that is a superpower. But I also want to be able to disagree with them in a way that doesn't make them feel smaller or. Or dumber or disrespected. I don't know how she does it. I'm going to keep watching her for the rest of my life and keep on studying her. I mean, that's why she's my mentor, because she's showing me how to do something I don't know how to do. And I told her, guess what? You're my mentor. And she said, oh, get out of here. And I said, no, you really are. And if you read my newsletter, you can see a picture of me With Gretchen together, actually. But I had my daughter take a picture of us together, and I have it in my newsletter, so go check that out. That's my secret mentor crush. Not so secret, though. I love you, Gretchen.

All right, we're moving into that part of the. Of the podcast where I've rapid fire questions for my team as they try desperately to stump me. And you know what? Sometimes they actually do. Okay, what do you got? What do you got, Sophia?

Okay. How would you like to be remembered?

How would I like to be remembered?

You.

You know, legacy is a very interesting question, because legacy and whether or not you want one, is a value. When George Harrison, when he was dying of brain cancer, the Beatle George Harrison was asked, how would you like to be remembered? His answer was, why in the world would I want to be remembered? And he was. He had become so humble in his spiritual quest that he actually, here was a beetle. Okay. One of the fab four who was saying, what would I want to be remembered for? What a. What an arrogant, inhumane way to see the world. And yet there are other people who all they do is build legacy. And, I mean, I remember one time interviewing a very famous football player when I was working at cnbc, and I asked him about his legacy, and he said he had a, quote, unquote, kitchen cabinet of people to help him make sure that his legacy was the right thing and that he had. He literally. He had a group of, like, profoundly great people all around him because he was watching his legacy kind of at age 23, 3, or 24. And these are two very different ways to think about legacy. And so what would I like to be remembered for? Well, in a perfect world, I would be remembered for being a person who was front and center in the end of animal cruelty. This is, like, a super important cause to me. I talk about animals on this show all the time. I've loved animals since I was a little girl. I came from a family of fishermen, and I would stand on the front of the boat and scream, throw that fish back. It has a family. I mean, it really was born into me, I have to say. But I have a real heart for animals. And everybody has their own cause. I'm not saying mine's any better than anyone else's. We all have causes that we care about passionately. But there are those of us who are working very hard to end cruelty, wanton cruelty against animals, which happens every day. And I would love to be remembered as, yeah, Susie Welch. Maybe somebody will say she was a great teacher. Maybe Somebody would say, you know, I would, you know, she was a great mother, she was a great friend. These are all things I endeavor to be every single day. But the thing that maybe I would be remembered for that would make me the most proud is that, remember when we did this X, Y and Z thing to animals? Well, group of people really fought hard and that that doesn't happen anymore because of these people. I would be super proud of that. That's the answer. I'm sticking to it. All right, got another rapid fire question.

Okay, the next one is what are you proud of but never have an excuse to talk about?

Well, I'm a big blabber mouth and talk about myself constantly. So this is going to be a very hard one. You may have stumped me, okay? You may have stumped dump me. I mean, I am such a blabber meth. I talk about what I'm good at and what I'm bad at. Okay? Like, oh my God, like I'm the worst singer in the world. And so I, I often mention that to people. But let me put this back on my team. Like, what am I good at that I never talk about? Nothing I talk about at all. Like, I'm terrible this way. This is a terrible trade.

I mean, I don't think you talk about how good you are with numbers.

Yeah, it's true. I'm good at economics. It's true. Because you know what I think my feeling is there's so many people who are so much better and they made it their profession. So I don't do that. That's true. Yay. Thanks for remembering that. That's wonderful for you to pull that one out. But I tend to talk about it. I am a huge proponent of the Enneagram, which is a personality test I urge you all to go take right now online. Just type in Enneagram and you know you've got the right one. If it's around $14, there's free ones. But the enneagram that costs $14 is the right one. And it groups you into nine personality types. This is a test. It was around during the Assyrian era. That's like 1200 B.C. kind of thing. It is really good. Academics have made it a lot better. And my Enneagram type is the achiever. And it's not because I want to achieve, it's because I want to be validated, obviously because of childhood trauma. And so I think that you've stumped me on this one. Okay. But I'm glad you came up with the numbers. Part of it. By the way, I'm good at math. Okay. All right, I think we've got. We're going to wrap it up with a quote today and thank you to one of our members of our community who said, Susie, one of the quotes coming back. The quotes are coming back. I got a quote I love. I have to ask my team this. You're young. Do you all know who Bob Dylan is? Please say frickin yes. Please say, okay. I mean, I've asked you other questions. You've not. You didn't know who. You didn't know who. Moby was deeply depressing. Okay? So Bob Dylan, here's a quote from him. He said, we have never arrived. We are in constant state of becoming. We have never arrived. We are in a constant state of becoming. We may see this in my book. We may see this as the front plate of my book. I mean, and, you know, here's the thing about the vast interweb that we all know and love so much. Bob Dylan may or may not have ever said this. Okay. I mean, who knows? I mean, I can't tell you the number of times I've seen quotes either attributed to Jack or me, more often to Jack that he just never said. Okay, so. But I hope he said it, and it's absolutely true. And actually, that's why I say becoming you does two things as a methodology. Becoming you gives you an immediate answer, if you want to use it that way, to the question, what should I do with my life? But it's also a lifelong tool to help you constantly do this reinvention thing of constantly figuring out who you are and over and over and over again, becoming and becoming and becoming and becoming. We are not a sentence with a period at the end. We are one long series of commas. Eventually they'll be a period at the end, but. But hopefully not for a long time for any of us. And so I love this quote. I'll read it one last time and then we'll wrap it up for this podcast. I'm so glad you were with me. I hope you come back next week. We have never arrived. We are in a constant state of becoming. And thank you so much for becoming along with me here on the Becoming youg podcast. I'll talk to you next week.