Podcast

My great fear in my life, and it's a deep, bone deep one, is I've accidentally invented a dating app. I mean, I think that.

It'S like, don't let anybody find out about it.

Hi there. Hi everybody. Welcome. It's Susie Welch. I am a professor at NYU Stern School of Business where I am also the director of the Initiative on Purpose and Flourishing. And this is the Becoming youg Podcast. I'm Susan. Super happy you're here. Today on the Becoming youg Podcast, I am going to talk to best selling author and mega influencer Liz Moody about some really big surprises that we found in her values. Plus what makes a marriage work, what really causes people to get divorced or to break up. And we also discussed whether we can ever truly be 100% authentic with ourselves in the world, even if we want to be. Just that little stuff, just those little questions. But before we go there, I'd actually like to ask you something. I'm going to share two statements with you and I'd like you to think about which one applies to your life, which statement you agree with. Are you more likely to say this? I. I'm all about fun and pleasure and good vibes and feeling great because life is meant to be enjoyed to the fullest. Just sit with that. Or are you more likely to say enjoyment and pleasure and self care are perfectly fine with me. They just are not as important to me as things like work or achievement or my faith or my family.

Your choice between those two statements, totally different statements, says a lot about your level of eudaimonia. Eudaimonia. Now you may be saying to yourself, eudaimonia. Now what does that even mean? Is it a medical condition? Do I need to call my doctor about it? So the answer is no, no, no. Eudaimonia is not a disease. It's a value. Okay, now what are values? Values are our deeply held beliefs and motivations. They are the guiding principle of our lives. We may be living them and we may not be living them, but we all have values. Becoming you as a method, it helps you figure out what to do with your life. And it depends on you knowing you your values. Now, look, frankly, some values are quite easy to understand and see and feel. Okay? One of them is what we call family centrism. That's the value that reflects the centrality of family in your life. You know, do you make every decision through a screen that is like, how does this affect my family? And then there's another value, quite easy to understand. It's achievement all right, like, how much do you care about winning and losing Now? Eudaimonia is One of the 15 values that are part of the becoming you ecosystem. And it is a hugely important value, and a lot of people have a lot of it, and yet it's a little bit more mysterious. So what I want to do is unpack it, because we're going to talk to Liz about it, but also, frankly, because it just matters so much. Eudaimonia, it can impact your relationships, it can wreck a friendship, it can wreck a marriage. I secretly call it the divorce value. Okay? It can save a friendship, and it can save a marriage, and it can really massively impact your career. And frankly, it can be the key to unlocking your purposeful stop. And so eudaimony is the topic. It's the hot topic we will be exploring today on becoming you. It's so hot, in fact, that I actually mentioned the word S E x later. I do. You know, I'm just such a prude. But I talk about sex later in this podcast. I hope my kids forgive me, but I'm gonna talk about it today. And I am so glad you're here. If you are new here to Becoming youg, you'll quickly learn that the Becoming youg methodology is based on the premise that your purpose in life lies at the intersection of your values, your aptitudes, and your economically viable interests. In other words, what you want to do, that's your values. What you can do, those are your aptitudes. And what you should do, those are your economically viable interests. Now, when it comes to values, as I said a little earlier, there are 15 of them. This is quite academic. If you'd like to know more about it, please DM me and ask to read my PhD thesis where I talk about values ad infinitum. So, anyway, there's 15 of them in the Welch Bristol Values Inventory. And we all have each one of these values in different degrees. Some are more or less important to each one of us, and the relative importance of them is a huge part of what makes you you. And if you want to understand yourself and your purpose, you actually, you know, you really need to know your values in their specificity. So one of those values, again, is Eudaimonia, our topic today. And what a word, right? It comes from. From the Greek. I mean, as the pompous ass hat would put it, it comes from the Greek. I hate hearing myself say that. But it is a Greek word, and I had to find a Greek word because in most values inventory, the Desires, the wants and the needs covered by this concept of eudaimonia are called hedonism, which is not only judgy, it's wrong, and it's really, really dated. Self care is not hedonism, all right? I just, you know, I don't have a lot of eudaimonia myself, as we'll discuss later, but I know that self, not hedonism. So technically I chose eudaimonia because in Greek it means good spirits or a state of flourishing. I love that word, flourishing. Describe it. You know, eudaimonia is about what it feels like when we pursue and experience joy and fun and well being. And it describes this sort of state of pleasure that we get from taking care of ourselves and doing what makes us feel good, emotionally or otherwise. That can be going to a rave, all right, or it can be knitting or it can be a cup of coffee in the morning. I was with a good friend last night and he was describing to me, I said, how's it going? He said, oh, you know, life and work are really, really hard right now. But every morning I read. He said, every morning I read 45 minutes of the Brothers Karamazov. And I know, I'm like, really in my happy place. And I'm like, okay. And you know, my son, who is 35 years old, he makes time every single week to play DD with the same group of people he's been playing Dungeons and dragons with for 15 years. That's his form of eudaimonia. It feels good. It's pure pleasure. That's eudaimonia. There are some real cultural and generational issues wrapped up in eudaimonia. I one time was invited to give a speech at a business school in the Midwest by a good friend. And when I was done speaking, she said to the class, look, you can ask Professor Welch anything you want. We have her here. Why don't you ask Professor Welch anything you want in a long line form? And I was like, this is so cool. Look at all these questions I'm going to get about the future of the economy and the future of work. And the first girl got up to the mic and she leaned in and she said, you've had such a varied and, you know, successful career, Professor Welch. What do you do for self care?

And I just looked at her, I was absolutely floored. I've never thought about self care my entire life. I just don't think about it. I'm low on eudaimonia. As I mentioned, it just. I think about work. I think about my faith. I think about all sorts of things. I think about my classes. Unimony is not a big thing for me. But I just was stunned. And I said to her, I said, what do I do for self care? And she said, yes. And as she asked it, like half the line sat down, indicating that was their question too. And I have come to find out that this is a question that a lot of my students care about is what I do for self care. I finally said to her, I don't really think about it very much. I guess I don't know if I pray a lot. I don't think that's eudaimonia. And then finally my last best effort was I said to her, I think my dogs are my. And I think they actually are. So I said, get a dog. Go to the local shelter and rescue a dog. And that is eudaimonia. And that was the end of that. But it taught me something. That whole experience really taught me about the growth of the understanding that eudaimonia is not a value to be secretive about or to not have at the front and center of your life. And that there's a whole generation coming up. My students are in them. And the young people who work on my team and becoming Universe have high eudaimonia. One of the members of my team is in Miami this weekend, and as she went out the door to go to Miami, I said to her, have some eudaimonia. But here's the thing that I'm getting at. You were wondering about that, weren't you? There's no right or wrong level of eudaimonia. I. I have become a values agnostic, and I urge you to be too. I think the whole world would be better if we stopped judging everybody. Your values are your values to own and to live. The only thing I really object to, the only thing I object to when it comes to eudaimonia and all values, is when people don't live their values. And when you picked one of those two value statements that I offered at the beginning of this episode, there was no correct answer, just the one that matches you and began to bubble up your value of eudaimonia. So your specific answer is not wrong. It's right for you. What I'm interested in you is aligning your eudaimonia with your career and your life in every way. Because if you don't, that disconnect can be very painful. And having a high score on eudaimonia as a value and saying, oh yeah, eudaimonia really matters to me, and you're not living it. And you know that that's what really gets in the way of living your purpose. Our conversation with Liz Moody perfectly captures somebody who has high Eudaimonia. It was. She took the values bridge, which is a tool that we use in becoming youg, which will soon be available to the general public. It showed that Eudaimonia was her number one value. But here's the thing. The tool also captures how much you're living and how much variance there is by how much you want it and how much you have. And she had a very wide variance, a very high variance. And what we found out was, like, she has Eudaimonia, and she really wants her Eudaimonia to be her number one value. But right now, she's at a Eudaimonia deficit. And we're gonna talk about that. We're gonna talk about that value and everything else. Let me give you Liz's credentials, although you probably already know them. Liz is the bestselling author of A Hundred ways to change your life. It's very good. And her incredible podcast, the Liz Moody Podcast, dives deep into topics like longevity and mental health. You have to listen to her podcast, by the way. Listen to her podcast with me. And she's built her whole career on helping others. And she what it means to seek and to find deep and sustained fulfillment. And yet, you know, as you'll hear her talk about, for Liz and for all of us, the work is never really done. Even when you found your purpose, the journey is never over. That's the journey of life. And sometimes the reason can be Eudaimonia and that we are not living enough of it. So this conversation between us, which covers a lot of territory, ends up at some point talking about marriage and divorce and mismatched values. And also Liz's recent encounter with grief. And it was recorded very recently at Liz's studio in California. Let's take a listen.

I think that the biggest thing for me, which I'm curious if this was the biggest thing for you, but was that Eudaimonia was my number one value, which is fun and pleasure and excitement. And I really don't feel like I have a lot of that in my life right now. And I was curious if the values change based on what we feel like we're lacking in our lives in any given moment, or if these are more stuck and that just like a big problem I have that I have this number one value, and it isn't showing up in my life.

Okay, so let's talk about that. So people are always asking me all the time, how steady are our values? How consistent are they? And I think that our values are pretty stable over time. And you make a really good point, which is. Is eudaimonia, which is your number one value? Your number one value right now? Because you are lacking in it. And I would say probably not, because I think that it's a number one value and you feel the lack of it in your life more keenly because it's a top value. But let me say this about it. Eudaimonia, which means fun and pleasure, also encompasses self care, okay? So it also encompasses something that you talk to people about all the time, and the variance could be high because you understand the importance of it so acutely, and that's why you may be feeling the dichotomy of it. I mean, I think that two things are going on. Number one, eudaimonia is the number one value for probably 65% of my students. And my students are between 25 and, say, 35. And I think this is very generational, very culturally perfect. I mean, we're in a time when the world is really changing. And no matter what side of the political spectrum you're on, if you're liberal or conservative, you still feel like gigantic change is occurring. And actually, the question always comes to me, like, isn't there always change? And my answer is, as a person who's lived through a lot of change. Yeah. But even for somebody like me who says it's always changing, it's changing faster. I mean, just AI, what it's going to do?

Technology.

It's technology. That kind of thing is going to happen with AI. And there's. I. When I look into the faces of my students, I see people who are thinking, all the jobs I thought I was gonna get, the world I thought was coming to me is completely.

Has a gigantic possibility of not actually coming to be. And then they think, what is there for me? And so I'm not surprised that this value of desiring to take care of yourself and to take care of your inner world and to have some fun is so high. But the variance that you have just to say what? Lizzie, Lizzie, let's talk about your values.

Tell the people my inner world.

You'Re amazing. To let us share this. Okay, So I want to just say what your top five values are. Which track? I think they feel right to me. I hope they felt right to you. The first is eudaimonia. This desire for Enjoyment for pleasure, for deep relationship, for self care is very high for you. Voice is your second value. Of course. This totally tracks with a person who has a podcast and writes books and has so much authenticity. Voice is the authentic expression of your. Of yourself. And I'm not surprised. That's number two. Luminance is fame.

I'm a Leo.

Okay. Are you okay? Does that explain it?

I'm okay.

All right. And so not again again. Not uncommon for me to see. And then fourth, as we were talking about earlier, non civic showing up very highly, this desire to help people. And then there's. You have a tie at number five with affluence, which is fine. The desire to have financial security and radius, which is the desire to change the world in some way. Does this feel like a self portrait to you?

Yeah, it does.

So with you, Eudaimonia, which is self care and pleasure and enjoyment, sort of living and drinking life up as a beautiful, exquisite thing is your top value. I wish I had more Eudaimonia in me. I just.

That's low for you, right? I said, you said in your book, super low.

Oh, my God. I'm like the hall of fame for low Eudaimonia.

Wait, what does pleasure look like to you?

I'll work. Work, work. I was on Hoda Kotbe's show the other day, and she said, I asked this to all my guests. Imagine a day where you can do anything you want, Susie. Anything at all. You wake up. What's the first thing? So I said, well, I have my coffee and I take the dogs for a walk. And she said, smiling at me in her beautiful way. And she said, what's next after that? And I said, work. And she said, no, you can do anything this day. I said, work. I said, like, you'd have to tie me. You'd have to force me not to work. Okay, so that's what pleasure looks like for me. We'll be right back with more of my conversation with Liz Moody in a moment. This is Becoming youg.

Hello again. I'm Suze Welch, and this week we are discussing the value Eudaimonia and its impact on relationships and purpose and work with author and fellow podcaster Liz Moody. Becoming you is like, let's look at all your values. Let's look at what you care about. Let's look at what. What you're good at, and let's look at what interests you. And it's very sort of a surround sound kind of process. And then you can do with it what you will but it is a way of explaining yourself to yourself so that if you're unhappy, you can fix it, or if you want to get closer to a career that you want, you can. Or sometimes it shows up something in your. A relationship, and you gotta figure that out because you do it. You do this test, for instance, and then you do. Your husband does it, or somebody you really love does it, and you look and you say, oh, this explains it. For me, unimony is number one, but for you it's number 14. And for me, work centrism is number two. And for you, I mean, do you.

Think that they need to more or less match up? Probably not one for one, but, like, ideally, your top five should relatively be the same.

I do, I do, I do.

I imagine Jack also had work.

Career.

I wish Jack was still living so we could both do this. But if I had to guess, we'd probably be one for one. I think that my cosmos was higher than his, but.

So you don't believe there's any sort of, like, opposites attract? I'll bring this beautiful surroundings to you, and you'll bring this work energy to me, et cetera, et cetera.

No, I don't think it, Liz, because I think, you know, I thought that with my first marriage, we were so, so, so different. We got married because of. We were high school sweethearts. There was a great deal of momentum. There was this moment in our lives. We both wanted to get away from our families of origin. We were running, and there we were, and one day we were on a street corner, said, I think we should get married. And I said, okay. And we tried, and it didn't work. And, you know, he's a dear, dear friend of mine today, and we're actually much more alike today than we've ever been in our entire lives. But I experienced what it was like when you didn't have the same values and it was friction all the time, and we didn't have the language to work out the friction. If we maybe had had one value that was overlapping, we could have built the marriage around. I've seen marriages saved by one overlapping value, and usually that is eudaimonia. Okay, so you can be disagreeing on everything, but if you both have eudaimonia really high, that can actually save a marriage.

Why do you think that is versus, like, faith? Or.

Because if all else fails, you go and have fun. And I have to say this. I was like, eudaimonia includes sex.

Interesting.

So. So if you really. That can. That can save a Marriage, it can.

Yeah.

When all else fails, it can destroy it. So. So I've seen that happen. Or you could have, like, a value of achievement, and if you really, really agree on achievement, that we are here to sort of have all the toys, for instance, that can. And you're different on all the other values, then fine. But I think the more disharmony that there is on values in a relationship, it's trouble. I do think that in relationships, at least a strong knowledge of what your values are so that you can. Oh, look at this. I'm number worker. Centrism is two for me, and family centrum is like number nine for me. And that's exactly flipped from you. Let's talk about how we can accommodate. And that's what I've said when I said about having a language of values, how unbelievably powerful it is, because then you stop saying you, you, you, you're this, you're that, and you say, look, there's this value of work centrism, and mine is so much higher than yours, and can we learn to live with that? So. But you're looking at me like you're not sure you agree.

No, I definitely. I think it's. It's actually. I mean, it's a fascinating thing that we should add to, like, the couples therapy conversation that I've never heard anybody articulate like that. I've heard people say, you know, if you're not aligned on politics, religion and money, I think are the big three, that you're gonna have a hard time in your relationship. But this is a much more complicated, interesting, nuanced way to talk about these things. Yeah.

My great fear in my life, and it's a deep bone deep one, is I've accidentally invented a dating app. I mean, I think that.

It'S like, don't let anybody find out about it. But I do think that in relationships, I mean, I've seen couples do this together. Because one of the sneaky things I did when I was first developing the inventory was I would have my wonderful colleagues from nyu, the other faculty members in the. In the management and organizations department. I'm in. Come over for dinner parties. And then at dessert, I would say, everybody want to play a game? And I would take out the early versions of the values bridge, and people would do it with their partners. And there was always this weird thing at the end where they would get the big variance score, and one member would have, like, a very low variance. In other words, they were very close to living in their area of transcendence. And one member would have a very high variance, and they were not. And then I would think, oh, then I had to stop doing it at dinner parties, Liz, because it was just not. It was awkward.

But I remember, like, such critical information because, again, I think so many people. I hear this from my listeners all the time. We're sitting with this general feeling of unhappiness, but we don't know what it's due to and we don't know how to fix it.

This is exactly, exactly what the values bridge exists for. Exactly, for. Okay, let me look at my results and say, okay, so let's look at yours. Okay. In this particular case, since I've got you here, I mean, what we're seeing here is that eudaimonia, this desire for pleasure, fun, self care, just sort of a feeling of inner harmony. And. And I think with you now, you've described that work is eudaimonic for you, which is almost like you're not doing enough of it.

Parts of work.

What parts of work? Okay. You could have more of it. You surely could. I mean, and I think that this in many ways might explain, like, if you have some kind of feeling like something is not filled, some cup is not quite filled. I would look at this cup, and I don't know, because I don't know your life in the details. Is it that you need more time with Zach? Is it that you need more time for yourself? I don't know. But I would ponder this and I would look at it and I would reflect and say, is this where the O is coming from? Then there's the variance. You have a high variance on voice. And this suggests. I think it's very linked to the work part of your. The parts of work that you like, of your eudaimonia, which is the high value on voice, suggests to me strongly that you love your message and you love what you're doing and you want to do it more and that you probably are exploring ways to do it more. I mean, I don't, you know, the world wants you, and I think that it's very. Sometimes it's very hard to think, okay, well, what is the authentic way for me to reach more people? It's.

Obviously, we reach a ton of people, and it's such a great honor to do that. But if you look at, like, the top three podcasts in my space, which we dance in and out of, it tends to be men. It's always men. We were the first woman to even break the top three in Our category. And I want like one of those really established, just huge podcasts that everybody is listening to that's part of the con, the cultural conversation. And. And so, yeah, sometimes I feel so honored that I'm able to reach who I reach. And I still feel stumped sometimes of how do I expand that?

Well, I have to say, this is exactly showing up in your values variances.

So then what do I do with that? Though? I am curious. You've met so many successful people. Do any of them kind of sit back and say, oh, I made it. Like, I feel really good every single day. Cause I haven't seen that. And I know that we adjust. Humans are so resilient, which is so beneficial in hard times for us, because you can adjust. Like, research shows that we can adjust to the most horrific life circumstances and we can bounce back from that, but we're also resilient to pleasure and to positive changes in our life where we normalize to a baseline so quickly.

I would say to your question, the thing about people who are very, very successful is that they never, by definition, feel like they're done.

And that's what I feel like. I don't feel. I look. And this is to my own detriment. I look to the podcasts that are reaching more people, that are changing more lives than mine, and I say, how do I get there? Why can't I be that? And I'm not as nice to myself, I think, as I could be about that. And then also to the pleasure point, I think I'm trying to figure out what does.

Pleasure and joy look like in my life? And in an acute way, I've been in a period of pretty deep grief and depression. We were talking before we got on air, but my cat died in December, and she was like my cat of 15 years. She's my baby. And it's rocked me in a way that I didn't think was possible. And so in an acute way, I've not been having pleasure. Things that used to feel pleasurable don't feel pleasurable. And I've been trying to kind of find myself back my way back to what does pleasure and joy look like in my life.

I do think that your eudaimonia variance may be explained by the fact that you're in a moment of deep grief. You are. I still have grief about animals that I've lost. And sometimes we grieve our animals in ways that are, you know, the people who don't have animals don't understand. But the thing about your animal Is. It's. In many ways.

It'S the one relationship where you. Where you think they never did anything wrong.

They never. And she was there. Like, during my period of agoraphobia, she was the only thing that was there day in, day out, like sleeping next to me on my pillow in my bed.

And I also think there's the loss of.

That, you know, I'm dealing with. I got her when I was 21. I'm never gonna get to be the person that I was in my twenties again when I had her. Yeah, all these things. And what pleasure is available to me and. And, yeah. What even feels good?

Like, can I ever be happy without her? And what. It's. I think you're in a complicated moment right now. I wish I could tell you it passes. When my dog Happy died, she had been Jack's dog. And when she died, my grief was very profound. And I think that that's linked to how you felt about your cat and your 20s and your struggles and how she was there for you then. So I.

She died after Jack. Oh, God.

Yeah. No, very bad, Very bad. So I feel you on that, and I think that's maybe explained some of your Eudaimonia score. So what would your prescription be for.

Me right now as a low Eudaimonic person with high Eudaimonic values?

Liz, can you get another cat?

We probably will. I think for me, I'm like, she was such a special, but I'm so afraid of being disappointed.

You won't be. You'll love a different cat differently. But my advice and prescription would be to you. If you have this kind of ability to have this kind of relationship with a animal, then you're born to have animals, and I would suggest you get another cat.

What about outside of that? I think a lot of my listeners, I hear from people all the time who are like, I want to feel more pleasure, but I don't know how to get there. And I feel so tired that I often end up just scrolling and calling this, like, numbing pleasure.

Right. What a fantastic question. I mean, if you are feeling like you don't have enough Eudaimonia and you don't have enough pleasure and you want to increase it, but you're paralyzed, and so you doom scroll. Okay, this is welcome to humanity. That is what's going on with, like, the vast majority of the world right now. I think. I think that we start setting our. What we think Eudaimonia is the site so high. Like, oh, it's water skiing.

It's it's like on a yacht.

Yeah, exactly. Right. But, like, I would suggest that there's, like, really small ways to have Eudaimonia. Like, actually having a really delicious cup of coffee and.

Having a phone call with a good friend is Eudaimonia. And I did this thing. My life was very, very curious, shrunken while Jack was dying, because I just couldn't leave his side, and I didn't want to leave his side. And I started doing decoupage, which is like this. It's an art form with, like, paper and glue. And he would be laying in bed sleeping for long periods of time, and I would have, like, this little cart in the room watching him sleep. And I would be making, like, little decoupage boxes and little. And it was so pleasurable. And it was like, a way I was. I was desperate for some kind of, like, something that felt good. And it was a very small, tiny little hobby that literally involved ripping up pieces of tissue paper and gluing them. Okay. And years and years later. Okay. My daughter is now an art therapist, and she said that she was learning about different art, different kind of things you can do in art therapy. And she said they talked about decoupages being the smallest thing that you can do to sort of start people into therapy with art. And she said she burst into tears remembering seeing me at the foot of Jack's bed when he was in hospice doing decoupage. I was giving my son. I didn't even know it. And so I think we have to lower our sights. For what? It doesn't mean going to a rave. It doesn't mean going to, like, Scotland and doing a bike trip, necessarily. Eudaimonia is just. It's like doing some. One small, fun thing, like running to a local museum and seeing. Not the whole museum, one show. Like, take it, take it slow. That's what I would say.

That's really good advice.

Okay, well, that is it. We are at the end of this podcast with Liz and also this podcast that really was about the value of Eudaimonia, the pleasure, slash, happiness, fun, self care value. And I am so grateful that we got to open it up with the help of Liz Moody. But if there's any thought I want to leave you with, there's no right or wrong level with Eudaimonia. It can be your top value or your last value. You are you and your values, DNA. It's just what you want. And you need to feel authentic in life and at work and in your relationships. You know what I care more about. And what I hope you care a lot about is whether or not you are living your values. So look, this methodology, it's called becoming you.

Not becoming your boss, not becoming your boyfriend, not becoming, God forbid, your mother. We spend so much of our life becoming other people, but really our journey is to become us. And my hope is that you learn how much unimodia matters to you. I hope you find out how much all the values matter to you. And then what I want is for you to go live those values at that amount. Exactly that amount. On the road, the never ending road to your purpose.

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