It’s OK To Do Scary Things in Life, Except One

Okay, Those little foot things you hear, those are the dogs running.

A little bell.

That's Pierre.

What you're hearing is me about to go for a walk in the woods near my weekend house during the holidays.

I've got four dogs with me. It is seven in the morning.

Crazy.

And I'm about to enter the woods with all four dogs. I hope we don't encounter. I'm not kidding. I hope we don't encounter a bear. Anyway, walking into the woods, it's dark and the snow is coming down in my head. I'm definitely over my head with four dogs at one time. But I'm doing my daughter a favor. And it's scary. It's scary what I'm about to do. Very scary.

Good news. We did not encounter a bear in the woods. Thank God. But what that walk did provide me with was an opportunity to think about why we, or specifically, I sometimes do scary things like go for a walk in very dark woods.

Today on Becoming youg, I have two things I want to share. Two things. We'll return to the walk in the woods with the dogs in the second part of the show. But right now I'm looking at my calendar and we are deep into January at this point. Can you believe it already? And I'm guessing that you, like everyone else in humanity, is already falling behind on your New Year's resolutions. And maybe you didn't make resolutions because everyone knows resolutions are dumb, but your New Year's ambitions and one of the reasons we fall behind on our resolutions is because we just take on too much onto our plates at the beginning of the year and we just say, oh, I'm going to do these gigantic things. And our life is just evidence of us, you know, having eyes that are bigger than our plate. I think that's the saying. And maybe you wanted to go for a run three times a week. God knows I need to start exercising again. I really do. Well, maybe you, like me, made a long list, a larger than life life list of everything that your life could and should be. We all, all do this. And you should not be surprised that I am part of this. And so I say my problem, and it's a pretty big one. And I know the reasons why, so don't at me about this. I know the reasons why I say yes, yes, yes, yes, yes to everything in life. Okay? And one of the reasons, if you must know, because you're wondering why, is because I had to say no for a long time. I had to say no for a long time because I had children, and I had to say no for a long time because my beloved husband was sick. And I said no to a lot of stuff. And I'm in this point in my life where I'm saying yes to a lot of stuff. Also, I happen to love the people asking me to do stuff, and I love my work. And I'm a person who just wants to live very, very big. And so I say yes all the time. And maybe you do, too. Okay? Especially at the beginning of the year when time throws you this clean slate, and it says, go ahead. Make your bold predictions, make your resolutions. Announce to the world what you want to do. That happens early in January. And I signed up for a million, billion, trillion things. And I will be honest. I will be honest. This happened before January. It did over the past few months. And I'm going to say it started probably six months ago. I started to say yes to so many things that the people around me thought that I was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. And I kept on telling people, I can do it all. I can do it all. And then the bill came due because, like, actually starting in September, it was kind of crazy what I had said yes to. Now, again, this story ends well, just like the story about the woods. We're gonna get there. And in fact, this story ends so well that I'm in a red beret and I'm marching in a parade. So stay with us to hear how that happened.

Hello, hello, hello. This is Susie Welch, and this is Becoming youg the podcast, where each week we explore that little, tiny, inconsequential question, what should I do with my life? I really love this idea that there's 3Ds in terms of how you live. There's default, which really is how we all live all the time. Reactive. Oof. Events overtake us. We just sort of muddle through the day, and we live in default. If that sounds familiar, you're not alone. You're just with billions of people who just generally exist and survive that way. And then the second D is deliberation, which is sort of putting some intentionality, like we. And I don't think I really want to work in finance. I want to work in something that helps people more. And you start to get a little bit more deliberate about your life. But the ultimate, the, you know, the Holy Grail, the Valhalla that we're all going for is that third D, Living by Design, where we have a theory of our life, we have a theory of who we want to be. We Have a theory of how we're going to change this world or not, or how we're just going to go about life and then we live by design. And that is the golden ring, isn't it? You really want to live with that third D of design. That's why people take becoming you. That's why people study this methodology along with me. Thank you for doing that. And look, becoming you asks you, okay, to lift your eyes up and look at the horizon and think about your values and think about, understand your aptitudes. Really dig into these things. Think about what interests you, okay? But sometimes, sometimes you just gotta survive, okay? And I have just experienced a period like that in my own life. I want to talk to you about it. Hope you don't hate me after I describe what a mess I got myself into. But even I, who you know the answer lady here, sometimes gets ourselves in big stinky messes. And I did survive. And I want to talk to you about it because I learned a lot from this experience. I learned a lot about myself. And I think I have a heart for people who are struggling. I remember one time early on I just was dating my husband Jack. And Jack was a bold, successful, kick ass guy. Life came very easily to him. He was the smartest person ever. He had a genius mind, he was likable. Everything came easily to Jack. And he was an only child of an Irish mother. And so the sun rose and set on his head. And one of the things I think that I added to his life and he would tell you this if he was still among us, is that I made him understand or I brought him to a place where he understood that for many, many people life is really hard. Just getting through a day is hard. People have grief, they have anxiety. Things are tough. And I think that I have a heart for that. I grew up in a house where there were people for whom life was very hard. I understood that that's part of the human. But in general, I still like this idea that you lift your eyes to the horizon and you live with some kind of design when you can. And actually there's a second part of that and that's if you can. So look, here's the story of when Susie had to lower her eyes from the horizon and I just come through it. This is how it went. Look, I'm a professor at NYU Stern School of Business. I love my job. I'm also happen to be my enneagram tells me and everything I know about myself tells me I'm a little achiever I'm the girl who wants the most claps I want to say yes to everybody. And one of the great blessings from God in my life is that I have been a successful teacher. That my students tell me that I'm a very effective teacher. And I love getting my ratings every semester because then I go to my room and I secretly glow all over them and I look what a good girl I am. And I actually love the fact that my students love me. You know what? I love them back. And I want. I want to be a great teacher. And so what happened last year was a lot of different schools at NYU came around and they said, susie, will you teach this section? Will you teach that section? And what ended up happening was I was approached by four different schools at the university and they all asked me to teach different sections of my class. And dear listeners, I said yes to everybody. And I wasn't really paying attention, or maybe I was kind of paying attention. And I kept on thinking, you can do it, Susie. You can do it, you can do it. And what ended up happening was this semester rolled around in September and I was signed up for teaching seven classes, okay, in the MBA program and in the executive MBA program. And then I was teaching even another class to NYU administrators. I also taught in the Washington, D.C. program. Then, you know, the facts are, it was my fault. I said, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I can do it, I can do it, I can do it. Look, suffice it to say that this was an epic. All right, fine, I'm gonna say it. It was an epic shit show, okay? It really was. And there were weeks where I would look at the week ahead and I would see. I mean, I have a friend who looked at my schedule because she was trying to get onto it and she said, is this a joke? And I said in a dark, macabre way. So anyway, I made a decision. I made a decision and it was this. Don't look up. I was just going to live the way I lived for many years, that I'm not proud of, where I was, just in survival mode. And I was actually going to make it kind of minute by minute. All I had to do was make it to the next thing I was going to teach from 9 to 12, for instance. I was going to deliver the best lecture I could and be most present. And then I would have a 15 minute break or an hour break, and then I was going to teach the next lecture with the best. And I wasn't ever going to think about the next lecture after the Next lecture or what I was doing that night or what was going the next day, I was one foot ahead of the other. Survival mode is just to be very, you know when you're in it. Okay, you know why? Because your whole body tells you. Your body tells you, like your chest tells you, your stomach tells you, your skin tells you. At one point when I was in survival mode, I mean, I was dreaming the lectures, I couldn't even sleep without working. But when you're in survival mode, you're not able to think about anything but what you're doing in the next minute or two or three, or just how you're going to get to the end of the day. Look, if you're in survival mode right now, or you think you're about to go into it and your question is, how do I get out of it? That's becoming you. That's the answer. If you're asking, when do I get out of it? The answer is as soon as humanly possible. You can't stay there because you get sick. It will make you sick. Do you understand how far away this is from the becoming you philosophy? Do you understand that? This is like an alien came and abducted Susie Welch. This is what it was like. I am all about looking up. I am all about going to 20,000ft and looking at your life and, you know, assessing your. I was actually the eye. Irony is I was in the classroom telling students to look up. Okay, I was teaching becoming you, saying, you know, don't live by default. Look at your values, excavate them, think about your aptitudes, test them, think about your interests, open your aperture. And meanwhile, I was in the bunker with a flak jacket on, getting from hour to hour, okay, what did I sacrifice? I sacrificed fun, sleep, smiling, enjoyment, eating other things. My dog's always like, hi, look, it's mom. Remember me? And other people helped me take care of them. But look, I learned so much and I want to just scroll back for a minute and talk about how much I hate something. And you know, I'm very loving and I love you and I love life, but I hate a few things in life. And one of the things I hate so much is scary movies. I think actually horror movies are a scourge upon society. I've seen two in my life by accident. The first one I saw, I was a 15 year old girl and my first husband, Eric and I were in high school together and he said, let's go see Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I've heard it's hilarious. Well, that Movie's not hilarious. I'm still haunted by it. Anyway, I hate them. But I actually have been thinking about horror movies because psychologists have all. You know, there's a whole academic field of study on horror movies, and the academic theorizing about horror movies is this. They serve a psychological purpose, and that is that if you make it to the end, you'll feel euphoric about life. If you it to the end, you realize you can survive anything. And that is how I feel. I feel like I survived my own horror movie. And I'm actually kind of wildly euphoric right now to actually get back into living by design mode. I've never been happier or more eager to leave this grind of survival mode because nobody should live in default mode or in survival mode all the time. Sometimes we have to. But that's no excuse to stay there. Okay? And I want you to rejoice in not being in survival mode. I want you not to ever have to do that. Do I understand that you're going to have to sometimes? Yes. Do I want you to ever stay there longer than you need to? No. So there's times not to look up. Now I'm raising my eyes, and guess what I'm raising my eyes to. Like, just when I had three lectures left. Okay? Only three days left. I thought, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to do something bold. I'm lifting my eyes to the horizon, and what did I find out? I lifted my eyes. I had time to just sort of take in the sweetness of life. And I found out that there is a parade in New York City for dachshunds. And I said, that's it, man. I'm actually. I'm gonna take my dachshund Pierre to the dachshund parade. And then I went online and I bought Pierre and I matching red berets. And damn it, that's what it is to live by design. But I didn't have enough time to think about things like this for four months. And now I'm giddy with the fact that I can start to design my life and design into it. Very important, impactful things like docs and parades, okay? That's what I have to say to you. Living by design. How good it is, how sweet it is, how it is not always available to us. But fight for it. When you lose it.

I'm Susie Welch. I'm becoming me, and you are becoming you. And we are in it together. And we will have more in just a moment.

Hello again. I Am Susie Welch. And this is becoming you. And I'm so happy you're still here. This is the show where we kick around that little tiny question, what should I do with my life? We kick it and kick it, and it. We're gonna get into the goal. I'm telling you. All right, now, we are going back into the woods, away from that feeling that there's just too much happening, and into a state, a place where I'm worried about what is going to happen or what could happen.

Everything's under control. I guess I'm just asking myself a question you may be asking yourself, which is why. Why am I doing something scary? I'm doing something scary because I do something scary constantly. I don't know. I. I do know why. I do know why, because it's in me to push the edge and to do scary things. Things because when you achieve them, it feels really good and you grow. That's the very clean answer. I'm not sure about the messy true answer.

I do know that every time I do something hard and I achieve it, I decide to do something hard again.

You may be wondering why. Okay, that would be a legit thing to be wondering right now. And I will tell you that one of the interesting things is that, you know, I take becoming you along with my students. I do all of the tests, I do all of the exercises, all of that stuff. And I have slowly come to understand over the past couple of years that aspect of myself, which I just took as a given my whole life long. And it's linked to what my enneagram would say is my achiever type, that I am driven to get the most claps. And so, obviously, when you achieve hard things, you get louder claps. And it's also very much attached to this value of scope of, like, just desiring a life that's big and exciting and. And. And being willing to take the chaos of it, and I get all the pieces of me that put me in that place. That's what my husband was like, that we both had this characteristic. I feel comfortable with people like it. And I still, though I'm going to be honest with you, I still have a little bit of wonder when I do it. Like, sometimes I. I do scary edge pushing things, and I say, why, Susie? Why? So you. Look, I'm a professor at NYU Stern, and this is an important setup for what I'm about to say, which is that a few years ago, I got a bee in my bonnet that I had to be like my colleagues and get my PhD. Okay? And everybody had a PhD. And so I went to go talk to the head of my department, a magnificent human being, Stephen Blader, renowned scholar of negotiation. I was sitting in his office and I said, steve, I think I'm gonna get my PhD. And I'm wondering if you'd write a letter of recommendation so I'll be accepted at the program. His eyes got so super huge. And I know the thought bubble over his head was, you are absolute, absolutely out of your. I liked you. And now I know that you're certifiable. You should be in an institution. His eyes got really big and he said to me, susie, this is not necessary. You're completely credentialed. I have my MBA. And he said, you don't need your PhD. It's not expected of you. And he was like shaking his head. I said to him, steve, I know why I'm doing this. I know my enneagram type. I know my values really well. I know who I am. I've painted the self portrait of myself. That's the beauty of becoming you. You kind of begin to understand why you do what you do. And you can thr out the stuff that you do that you don't like. Well, guess what? I like this part of me. I've made peace with it because so many cool things have happened to me and I've met so many cool people. And you know what I've done? Scary things. Hard things. And I've failed. Okay? I've had things not work out. I decided a few years ago that on top of my teaching and writing and all the other things I do, that I was going to go be a consultant at a fancy consulting firm, okay? And I was going to be a special advisor. And I tried it. Good faith, effort. They tried it. Good faith effort. It didn't work out. My skills were not a match for them and we parted ways. And so sometimes I put myself onto that thin ice and I go through it, okay? So it doesn't always work. So I'm not. I'm not doing it because it's guaranteed work. And I'm doing it because somehow opening the aperture of my life and doing all these crazy ass things are like getting a PhD at age 65, which is, we can all agree, the definition of crazy ass. It meets my needs. It meets who I am. It's part of my self portrait. And I have the choice to throw it out. I have the choice to throw out these behaviors because they're values and those are optional. But I choose My. Them. I choose them.

There's very little light in the woods because of the snow coming down. And the dogs are just covered all of them with like a coat of white snow. They look.

They love it.

It's. They're not scared. I think they're really excited. They're like, looking for the deer that I don't want them to see. And they're.

I don't think they want to see a bear either.

I can barely see the path ahead of me. Yet another metaphor here in the woods. I can barely see it. I can kind of make it out. It's uphill. Oh, God. The metaphors are everywhere.

I'm thinking a lot about the. I'm not kidding. I am actually thinking about the value scope, which this would fall under, which is just the desire to have stimulation and excitement in your life and a desire to constantly be pushing the boundaries it's in you. People are mystified by it sometimes, but you are mystified by people who want a little life. Like the meme, I like this little life. And you think, I'd rather stick a needle in my eye. And they look at your life and they think, what is wrong with that chaos junkie? It's just a continuum scope.

I have to say something incredibly important about this value, about scope. I have to say this. And I. If I would. If I could shout and have you stay on this podcast, I would shout it. And here's the thing. Scope is not good and it's not bad. It just is what it is. I have a high scope level, and it doesn't make me any better than somebody who's got a low scope level. This is a personal choice. That's what qualifies it as a value. Okay? And you can change it as you go along in life, or you can tweak yours. And I know and love so many people who have scoped their lives in a totally different way than mine. I have beloved children with. With very, very limited scope lives. And I look at their lives sometimes and I think two things. I think, how are they related to me? Okay, that's the first thing I think. But of course, then of course I know they were. Cause I was in the room when it happened. But also I think, how marvelous. And you know what else I think about it? Maybe they're right. Maybe that's a better way to live. Maybe that's okay. But usually what I think is that's who they are. And I love them exactly like that because I have values. Agnostic. Okay? Now when I want to go do something crazy and fun. I want to go with a high scope person, okay? And because they're going to be just like me, we're going to do wacky together. I mean, I had an interesting experience when I took my entire family to Sicily to go back to our village, which is Calta Necessetta, which is a sulfur mining village in the middle of Sicily. I do not recommend it as a vacation. Stop. Sicily is so sexy. Everyone wants to go there because of White Lotus. My village is not a place you're going to visit, by the way. But we went there because it was super important for us to see our family origins. I highly recommend that kind of experience, going back and seeing where you're from. Oh, my God, what a weep fest. I should do a whole podcast about that experience. But look, I took a whole family to Sicily to go see it and to see where we were from, and everybody experienced this whole wild trip that I had planned quite differently based on their scope. Members of my family were doing a lot of the crazy, edgy things with me. Going down to the sulfur mines, climbing up on a little ladder to see the little tiny grave marker where my grandmother was. And other people were just standing there and they were taking in all they could take with their level of scope. We all had a fantastic time together respecting each other's scope levels. Okay, so there's no good or bad in this, and everybody can. But. And actually, I would just say one of the beautiful things about having a language around values, a beautiful, beautiful thing, is that you don't judge anybody about it. You just say, look, we. There's this value called scope, which is how much stimulation you want. And some people are higher and some people are lower. And we all have a right to be exactly the way we want to be.

In the middle of the woods with the snow coming down with four dogs. And actually, I'm beginning to feel exactly why I do it, which is it is so fun and exciting and edgy.

And guess what? It's a story.

Like, it's a story I get to tell you.

Out over.

I tripped on a branch. The walk is almost over. I can see the end of the path. I've got all four dogs. I mean, it's amazing we made it through. And it was a lot of excitement here. Little Pierce Bell in the background. And I actually.

I see the end of the path.

And I'm all those.

Those scopey things.

Like, I'm exhilarated and I'm really proud and I'm really Excited. My son has this line, do it for the story, which is like, when you're scared about doing something, do it for the story you'll be able to tell. I think that's probably the motto of a lot of scope people.

I want to say one more thing about scope. Having taught it and talked to so many people about it. Scope as a value, it torments people. Sometimes it torments them. It's a funny value that way, in that they think, oh, I should want a lot of scope. Or when I was growing up, I wanted that big, exciting life. Oh, I should want it. I should want to go out. And then they taste it, and it tastes bad to them, and then they feel guilty. Like, I should want to go out every night. I should want to go to the museum. I should want to see my friends. And then they think, but I want to Netflix and chill, or I just want to hang out, or I just. I like my little life. I like my little life. They like that. And so scope kind of gnaws at people, and it takes a while. It's a journey to actually titrate it correctly for yourself to say, this is how much scope I can live with. This is how much I want. And, you know, you can tweak it. That son who said, you know, do it for the story, he was a person who was having a pretty low scope life, and he used that line to tell himself why he should have more scope. Okay? He did that to remind himself. So scope is really value that you can move the needle on, and you should not beat yourself up if you discover that low scope is the right fit for you, that you do not want to go into the snowy woods with four dogs by yourself. It's okay. I can.

In a second, I'm gonna be able to see the house in the distance. Audrey, come on.

Let's go.

Audrey went off the path. That's what happens. Pierre's got something in his mouth, which is scary, but I think we're gonna make it. One, two, three.

Where's the. The fourth? Here he comes.

Hey, Rivy.

All right.

I think I'm about to see the house. Let's see how seeing home makes this.

High scope girl feel.

Actually, to tell you the honest truth, I had so much fun on this scary walk that all I could think.

Was, when I get home, I want.

To tell everybody about it, so they'll go with me on another one later today. No kidding. Oh, my God. The snow is really heavy.

There's.

There's the house. I see it in the distance, and it feels good. I'm. But I'm not, like, running towards it. I'm feeling like the last minutes of this walk, this scary walk. I have the hugest smile on my face.

River.

River is naughty. Anyway, let's go home, everybody.

Let's go. Come up. Here.

You are. No, I don't do this podcast by myself alone in a closet with a microphone. Right? I don't do anything alone, but I do not do this podcast alone. Becoming youg is produced by Jessie Baker and Eric Newsom of Magnificent Noise. Our production staff includes Muska Nagpal and Kristin Muller, with help from the Becoming Universe members Eliza Zinn, Hallie Reiner, Maddie Paul, and Tanya Joji. I could not do it without these people. I couldn't do life without these people. Trust me. I'm your host, Susie Welch, and this is Becoming youg.