So You Think "Altruism" is One of Your Values? Yeah, That's Complicated.

Hi, Stanley. So, Stanley, this is Sylvia. So she's about 18.

Today on Becoming youg, we are taking a field trip. In a few moments, we'll head out to the farm to meet Rachel McChrystal. You just heard some greetings to Stanley and Sylvia. Stanley and Sylvia are pigs. As you may have guessed, we wanted to visit with Rachel because she embodies one of the two values that we're going to be opening up and examining today. And the one that we will be examining with Rachel is called radius. In short, your level of desire to change the world. This is very big picture stuff like end poverty, bring peace to a certain nation, or as in Rachel's case, end animal suffering. We will also later on this podcast, meet with another Becoming you listener, Jody, who's a trauma surgeon. And she embodies the other value that we'll be discussing today, which we call non sibi, which is Latin for not for oneself. This is the value that impels you to jump in when you see a niche, to mentor a person who's struggling at work, to stop and change the tire of a stranded stranger you've never seen in your life before, to bring a neighbor casserole when you see him getting out of the car with a broken leg, to be what Mr. Rogers called a helper. Okay. These two values, radius, world changing help, and non civi personal more intimate level help, are present to one degree in all of us, in everyone. You can have both of them. You can have one. You can have very little of either. And just like all the other values that we explore in becoming you, there are no right or wrong levels of these values. But part of understanding your purpose is understanding how much you have of each of these values and what role these values do or don't play in your life. But there's a reason we talk about these values together. Because the truth is, both of these values hurt a little when you express them. They feel good. I mean, they're psychic reward, don't get me wrong. But they hurt. They both require you to put yourself second in one way or another. And that matters when you are figuring out who you are in the first place.

Hello again. It's Susie Welch here. I am a professor of management practice at NYU Stern School of Business, and I'm the director of the Initiative On Purpose and Flourishing, also at NYU Stern, and this is Becoming youg, the podcast where each week we endeavor to tackle that little, teeny, tiny, inconsequential question, what should I do with my life? In the episode today, as I mentioned we're going to talk about these two values that often get confused with one another, but we shouldn't. And we can't confuse them because knowing the difference between them has a huge impact on our lives. Now look, the first value is radius, which is the value of wanting and needing and yearning to change the world in some way. And the second is non sibi, which is the impulse, the desire, a yearning to help people in ways that are personal, large and small. Now, let's just step back for a second and talk about why we'd even be discussing these words to begin with when you could be doing something really fun like scrolling on TikTok. Why would you even be discussing these words? Well, I am very glad you asked. These terms are actually part of a vocabulary of values and they come from a language that we use in becoming you. The methodology that I've invented to help you answer the question, what should I do with my life? Values are invaluable. I love that. Values are invaluable in every possible way, but they're invaluable when it comes to understanding who you are and what you wanna do with your life. And by the way, if you are new to this podcast, there is an episode in which I describe every value. It's episode 36 and it came out at the beginning of this year. And some people seem to really love that episode. So if you're interested in all of the values, go ahead and listen to it. Anyhow, one of the many things we do on this pod is we try to understand values better. And today it is time to do that with radius and non sibi, which means we are heading out to the farm.

My name's Rachel McChrystal and I'm the executive director at Woodstock Farm Sanctuary.

So Woodstock Farm sanctuary is a 60 acre rescue located upstate New York in the beautiful Hudson Valley that houses more than 300 animals. I love going there. One of my favorite pictures of me is hugging a chicken there. Anyway, the purpose of Woodstock Farm Sanctuary and everyone who works there is to open the world's eyes to the unique sentience of animals. To show the world that animals are individuals and not commodities. So the purpose of that is that people, after visiting the sanctuary, will think twice about, well, eating animals. Look, I know this is a very hard topic, what we eat. But please stay with me. Do not hit stop and go out now. Let me just say this. Look, full disclosure, I've been a vegan for 15 years. I love animals very much and I have learned that discussing this topic is the fastest way to upset, annoy, or offend my friends. I really don't do it anymore. I've just had too many difficult conversations. I will tread very carefully here. What we eat and what you eat and why we eat it, that's personal. That's your business. The only person I care about what they eat is me. Okay, so listen, the point of what I'm saying is that we are not using Rachel as an example to advance a cause, but because when my podcast producers came to me and said, all right, we're doing this podcast on Radius and Non Sibi, who was a great example of Radius, I didn't think for a nanosecond I just said, Rachel. She was the first person who came to our mind. She is Radius in living color. So Rachel's time at Woodstock started when she was in her 20s. And she got there because she followed.

A cow, and there was a cow named Kaylee who escaped from a slaughterhouse outside of Philadelphia. And she got on the local news because people saw her and they wanted her to live. And the slaughterhouse workers caught her, brought her back, and it became this, like, big rallying cry for the animal rights activists in Philly to call and ask for her to be released. And so I, like, really fell in love with her.

Rachel started out as a member of the sanctuary, and then she started to volunteer, and eventually she moved to the area and she started working there, and it became her life. But you know what? Radius as a value was always her life.

I don't know. I just have always been just, like, really on fire about kind of the big injustices. Like, I was that kid where I would just get, like, really upset. I remember, like, for years telling my parents to not buy me Christmas presents because it was, like, materialistic, and I was worried about plastic pollution and then getting so mad if they did because they were just trying to, like, do a kind thing and make me not left out, I would feel, like, physically just so ill.

I think you can hear in her voice and in her words that radius is the value of wanting to change the world in a systemic way. It is the desire to change the world in a big way that really matters to you. When I start teaching this in class, I often mention Greta Thunberg right off the bat, or I say Malala. People immediately get it. These are individuals who have devoted their whole lives to creating systemic change, change that people can see.

If I was to wake up on my 85th birthday and.

Cry from regret about something, I think it would Be that I could have done more, and I didn't. Everyone who knows me jokes about this, like, I am so chill, and I'm, like, so understanding, and I'm like, I'll put myself. I will, like, inconvenience myself again and again. But if, like. If something. If there's, like, an injustice happening, I will. I just get so mad.

High radius people, they want to see change happening in the world to be satisfied, and it's got to be seen. It's not like they don't want little incremental change. It's got to be felt. It has to be as if a bomb dropped on the world. And the crater was quite large in Rachel's case. While she's really happy to care for the individual animals, what she's really after is to change the entire concept of animal agriculture and how we think about animals.

Our lives are so short, and there's, like, so much happening. And I just.

I.

Don'T think I would feel like a functional person if I was, like, not working on a big issue.

Many, many, many radius people present with this value very, very young. Even when they were very, very little, they started talking about seeing what they perceived to be injustices. You heard Rachel talk about it when she said she wouldn't let her parents buy her Christmas presents. So this, I really can relate to this. I mean, radius happens to be one of my top values. Radius presented for me when I was a child, and I came. God's funny in this way. I came from a family of avid fishermen. Every time we had a minute, my family got on the boat and we went fishing. And I would sit up on the front of the boat and no lie, I would just cry. I'd be sick to my stomach. It drove my family. They found me to be very annoying. And I'd stand up on the front of the boat and I'd scream, throw that fish back. It has a family. And they say, shut up, Susie. And here's the funny thing. I went home and ate the fish, okay, Just because I compartmentalized, like most people do about animals, but I felt for the fish. Those with exceptionally high radius, like Rachel, are usually willing to give up a lot of other things to devote more of themselves to their cause.

I think my time for, like, personal stuff has been compromised. I've chosen not to have kids, and that's not because of this career. I didn't pick pigs over babies. I don't think I would have been able to do this work. At the same time, I. You know, making way Less money than I could make. Every now and then I get a call from a recruiter for some position and some corporate job or like really big nonprofit. I, I don't think I would be happy.

Working and spending my career doing a less all consuming.

Role, an all consuming job. But I also recognize that choosing a career and a pathway that is also your passion and that you feel so strongly about means that it is very hard to turn it off. And I have a hard time with work life balance because my work is also my life and my life is also my work. And I know that I would feel very stuck if I wasn't in doing something with my life that was challenging me and making me think and making me problem solve and making me feel like I was of value.

Now, you may listen to Rachel and find her inspiring and there's another chance that you might hear her and feel a little sad for her or think there's nothing further from your values than her values. Or you may be somewhere on the spectrum in between. You may think, okay, I get it and I think it's beautiful that that person devotes her whole life to her radius. But that's just not for me. And anywhere on this spectrum is fine. I mean, I have close friends who radius is their number 15 value on 1 to 15. And I have close friends where it's number one and everything in between. The point of understanding your values isn't to model yourself after an ideal. It's not to be better than anybody else. It's just to be better, better at understanding yourself so you can identify that intersection as becoming you wants you to do between your values and your aptitudes and your interests. That's the whole point we are data gathering so that we can figure out your purpose. You know, I would actually love to know where you are in Radius. I'm just so. I'm just always gathering data and I want to know about you. You can write me or DM me on social media, on Instagram or wherever you find me and let me know where, where Radius is for you. Is this sparked any thoughts on you about that?

So when I'm living my value to the fullest, it's honestly, I love, I love using what I've learned, you know, in the classroom and with experience and stuff like that to help people like in their hour of need.

That voice is another Becoming youg Listener, Jody. Now, Radius is not very high for her. It's not a high value radius, but she is extremely high number one. On the other value we're exploring today, non sibi. We'll hear more about Jody and we will learn about her non sibi. And we'll explore what this value means to you in just a moment.

Hello again. Suzy Welch here. I'm so glad you're here. And this is becoming you. Today we're exploring two of the values we use as part of Becoming youg. The methodology, the pouring out of yourself, the hurt. So good values. We heard about Radius with Rachel in the first half of the pod. And now we will leave Rachel's farm, which is beautiful, and let's head to the hospital.

My name's Jodi Taylor and I'm a general surgeon, a trauma surgeon.

Jody has devoted the vast majority of her life to becoming a doctor. She's a really great doctor. And it is to satisfy one drive, her inner impulse, desire, motivation, compulsion to help people.

When I saw that Nancy was my top value, it was not shocking. Only because when I look at my life and what I ended up doing with my life, it makes. Makes a lot of sense. You know, the fact that I'm a doctor and I really. I feel really almost compelled to help people. It feeds me, you know, I enjoy it and I feel like it's part of. It's being true to myself when I'm in that type of role.

Now Rachel, who we heard on the farm in the first half, is fully and completely committed to driving huge social cultural change. She's into macro helping, changing the world. But for Jody, she is about micro helping, changing individual lives. In Latin, non sibi means not for oneself. The first time I ever heard non Sibi I was 14 years old. I showed up in boarding school in New Hampshire, Exeter, and the motto of that school is non sibi. And I quickly heard it meant in Latin, which we all had to take in those days. I didn't take it for long because I moved on to the very useful language of French. Anyway, in Latin, non sibi means not for oneself, which is about as simple an explanation of it as possible. Now, there are other values inventories that talk about this impulse because it is as old as humankind. But other values constructs, most of them developed by other academics. In fact, all of them developed by other academics call this value by another name. They call it altruism. And I rejected that. When I was making my inventory, I went with the Latin term because I thought. Think that I. I know I tried to create a values inventory where the terms were not judgy and leading the witnesses because I wanted people to be able to say I'm low on this value, and no one wants to say I'm low on altruism, even though some people truly are. So I went with nad sibi. It means the same thing, and it gives people the freedom to say the truth about themselves. And by the way, this is why we created the Values bridge, which is a digital tool, because people have a hard time talking about their values without wondering how people are going to feel about them. So some self reporting on values is. And non sippy helps with that. Not surprisingly, lots of people say that they want to help others. I mean, who doesn't say it? But a lot of times helping others, it can be wildly performative. You know that. That's why at every major hurricane, we have all the celebrities helicoptering in to pass out blankets and ladle out chili. And, you know, I don't know about you, I don't care. I don't care why they're doing it, if their motivations are good or bad. I think any kind of caring is good. But we're not in the business of performative values here. We want to know about your true of non sibi. For some people, non sippy's huge. It's huge. For Jody, living non sibi to the hilt was the absolute driving motivation of her life.

And it's funny because you think you go into doctoring because you're like, oh, I want to help people, but I think it sort of is displayed elsewhere in my life too. You know, when you're at the store and someone's struggling to get something, you know, I'm like, oh, let me get you that. You know, and it's almost like not even a thought. You're urged just from somewhere inside to. To automatically do that.

Of course, Jody helps someone get something off the shelf in the grocery store. I kind of just see her going from, like, literally saving somebody's life in the emergency room, which she does on a regular basis. And I can just see her going from, like, literally stitching somebody back up after a motorcycle accident, going to the supermarket, and actually saying to, like, a little old lady, can I get that toilet PA for you? Off the top shelf. Because it's all the same to her. It's all an expression of who she is, which is helping individuals, like, the most intimate level possible.

This is kind of silly, but, you know, somebody has appendicitis, and I'm like, oh, I can fix you. And I know how I. I really love that ability to, you know, help someone, not only through it, you know, from a Doing standpoint, but also from an emotional standpoint, like with the relationship. I enjoy that.

Now, obviously, not everyone who's high on nazibi needs to go to medical school or express their non siby through being a doctor. You see it everywhere. You know, school, custodians, chefs, yoga teachers, you name it. Non sibi can come out literally. You could be a banker on Wall street and have non high non sibi. And it can come out on, like, what you do on the weekends or how you mentor people at the office or what kind of colleague you are. It really can. It's really career independent. But if you have this value and however you express it, it's about change that actually might be invisible to everybody but the person you're helping. So, like radius non sibi. Here's the truth. It can hurt a little or it can hurt a lot. We heard Rachel talk about the impact of her radius work on her relationships.

If I were to cry from regret on my 85th birthday, it would just. It would honestly be about relationships for me if I was there, like, without my husband, you know, or without my family or without my people that I love around me. That would make me so sad. I love helping people in my family. It's where some of this tension, though, comes with this, because with my job, I'm at work a lot, and I help other people all day. And then right. Right now, actually, my mom is really not doing well medically, and I'm not. I'm not helping her as much as I am, you know, in my job, where I'm helping all these other people that are strangers. And there's just sometimes a guilt there that I'm not. I'm not with her. Then again, I'm supposed to be at work.

Jody feels the ouch of non sibi also. That's the thing about non sibi and about radius, by the way. These two values, sometimes the place you feel the pain, sometimes the cost is in your relationships with your family.

The non sibi. You know, here I am helping other people and giving them the best of myself, and they're strangers, and I'm not at home with my own little kids and teaching them. And it's. It's almost like there becomes not enough hours in the day to do all the things that you are called to do. I'm helping strangers and actually not the people that I love and that are close to me.

It's kind of ironic, I guess, that sometimes helping others means our family says, where are you? You're always helping everybody. But Us. The list does not end there. Obviously, Non sibi and radius have other values that they conflict with besides family. One of them is affluence. All right? I mean, radius jobs and non Sibi jobs, these are not the big high paying jobs typically. And the values of non Sibi and radius, they really can very readily conflict with Eudaimonia. Eudaimonia. Go back and listen to the podcast on Eudaimonia right this moment. Eudaimonia is the value of fun, self care, pleasure and recreation. And that does not necessarily go that well with wanting to change the world or help others. I mean, you can make it work out, but these values are in conflict with each other. But, but, but, but this is life. Conflicting values. Life is filled with irony and tough calls around our values, which can bring us pain and it can bring us joy and sometimes requires real trade offs. But the main thing our values bring, it's worth it. Because what knowing our values and living our values really brings us is authenticity. And bottom line, that's what all of this is really about. This is what it's all about. Becoming you, the fullest expression of you, which can only happen when you know your values and take that knowledge to the world, to explain yourself to the world and design a life for yourself where your values are fully being lived into. And so.

We keep trying to understand ourselves better and understand our values, get a language around it, and figure out how to handle the trade offs between all the values that we have. Does that happen overnight? No. For a long, long, long time in our lives. Often we dance around our values and we try to make everyone happy about who we are because we love a lot of people and we need to be a certain way for them. And so we can actually suppress our values, or we can postpone our values, or we can completely bury our values so that there's a version of us that's not exactly us, that is out there. That is true for all values, by the way, not just the ones that we're talking about today. Non Sibi and radius. I had the craziest experience the other day. It was the last day of class becoming you at NYU Stern School of Business. And on that day, that's when my students present their lives of purpose with four slides. You know, they have gone through the whole six weeks of the becoming you process, and they've excavated their values and they found out their aptitudes and their interest. And then they get up and they present what their purpose is and they show their lives over the course of the next 40 years using four slides. And they've done the work, they've done it all. And what I do is my students then get up and they talk about how their lives unfold. It's beautiful. And one after another, I watch my students relate the story of their lives going forward. Having it all perfect job, perfect family, perfect everything. All their values perfectly and authentically lived out. No compromises, no sacrifices. Everybody's life was perfect. And I have to tell you, I started feeling myself cry a little bit. I was like, did they even hear me this semester? Was I in this room? I even said to one of the students after his presentation, everybody was applauding him. And I stood up and I said, this is a beautiful presentation. It was. My students are awesome. And he said. And I said to him, after he finished showing his absolutely perfect life, I said, you know, actually how hard it's going to be to do this right? And he said an interesting thing. He said, yeah, it's gonna be hard. I still want to try.

So I had to think at that moment, yeah, I did that. I tried. I tried to be everything to everyone, all at the same time time for 30 something years until I just couldn't do it anymore. And finally I got to a point where I said, here are my actual values and I'm actually going to live them. Please love me for that. Not the version of me and the values that you want to see. And you know what? I am living proof here to tell you that it worked. So it all starts with knowing your values. It starts by saying, hey, I'm high radius or I'm medium non sibi or whatever you are. To starts with saying that stuff about all your values. It starts with knowing yourself first. I promise you in the long run and even in the short, that will always, always, always help you hurt less.

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