The Cure for Nihilism with professor Suzy Welch | A Bit of Optimism Podcast

1. SWSuzy Welch0:00

   I had a student, he was in banking. He was living his parents' values, not his own. Just as he had long suspected he was an artist in banking. Well, his interests really were beautiful women and fashion. And he said, "My purpose, my area of transcendence is to dress Kim Kardashian." When he first said it, the class like burst into laughter. They thought he was joking, and he said, "No, I'm not kidding. I'm gonna make the clothing that make women impossible not to look at. I've been living a lie." So I said to him, "What are your parents gonna say?" And he said, "They're probably gonna say at last, because I've been miserable for 10 years." [upbeat music]

2. SSSimon Sinek0:35

   Here's a story. A smart, hardworking person spends years of their life chasing an ambitious goal. They structure their life, career, and identity around this one particular outcome, only to realize it was never really what they wanted. That's where Suzy Welch comes in. Suzy has lived many lives. Broadcast journalist, best-selling author, consultant, and now professor of the class Becoming You at NYU's Stern School of Business. Her students learn what it means to become their most authentic selves. Becoming You is also the name of Suzy's podcast and new book. I had a blast talking with Suzy about what it takes to create a purpose-driven life, and why sometimes it takes a midlife or even a quarter-life crisis for people to find the path they want and need to be on. This is A Bit of Optimism. Suzy, I, I have heard so much about you.

3. SWSuzy Welch1:39

   I've heard so much about you.

4. SSSimon Sinek1:40

   How long have you been teaching?

5. SWSuzy Welch1:42

   Uh, four years.

6. SSSimon Sinek1:44

   So what made you wake up in the morning and say, "You know what? Think I'd like to teach"?

7. SWSuzy Welch1:48

   It would've been beautiful if that's had how it had gone. What had happened was I'd had a long, and many would say, successful career in broadcast journalism, and then I had run a tech, uh, startup, and then my husband got very sick, and I had to pull back on my work to take care of him. And then he died, and I actually went to the woods of Upstate New York with my children. It was during the pandemic. And in fact, I thought I'd never work again, and my actual thought was, "I will never actually return to the world again." I was gonna stay up in the woods and walk my dogs for the rest of my [chuckles] life. And that felt like logic at the time. I now can look back, it was five years ago, and I could think, "Oh, that was grief." But it felt like a great deal of logic. And so in the middle of this, I was lost. And then, uh, uh, thanks, um, to the goodness of Hoda Kotb, I had sort of an intervention where they called and asked me to come back on the Today Show. And I went back on and I n- had this realization. I'm thinking, "Oh my God. I must return to the world." So being back at work was this incredible gift, and I was like, "I'm-- I've got to be back at work. I, I actually, I actually can't stay in the woods." I had this idea for this class about, the class that eventually did become Becoming You, about how to think about your life more intentionally. And right in that moment, in this act of incredible, uh, I, I don't know what it was. Uh, y- I happen to believe in God, so I'm gonna say it was that, but, uh, I understand that others might not. But this incredible thing happened where a friend wrote me and he said, "Hey, I'm just checking in on you. By the way, I'm teaching at NYU Stern right now," and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I stared at it. Like, I stared at that email, like, and my... I had a physical reaction. Like, my body was like, "Ah, that is it. That is the purpose I was waiting for." So I jotted some notes down about what this class might be. Now, I had gone to business school myself. I understood what a business school curriculum was. I understood what you learn and you don't learn. So I found my way into the office of the dean of NYU Stern Business School because, uh, we had mutual connections and because I've been swimming in this world for 40 years. And I described the class to him, and he said, "You know, we don't have that class." I said, "I know. I looked at the s- curriculum." And he said, "Well, do you think you could create that class?" And I said, "We-- I could try."

8. SSSimon Sinek4:08

   Yeah.

9. SWSuzy Welch4:08

   And I did, and we thought we'd try it as an experiment, and the next thing you know, it kinda, uh, was very popular, and-

10. SSSimon Sinek4:15

    Mm

11. SWSuzy Welch4:15

    ... it took off. And they came to me and said, "Look, we'd like you to teach this many more times this semester."

12. SSSimon Sinek4:21

    Yeah.

13. SWSuzy Welch4:21

    "And, um, we're wondering if you'll join the faculty."

14. SSSimon Sinek4:24

    Well-

15. SWSuzy Welch4:24

    And I did, and that's why I teach both management and that class, so...

16. SSSimon Sinek4:27

    So what I'm so curious about is, is what are the misperceptions that people have about what it means to l- live a life with purpose, on purpose, becoming their full self? W- I'm just so curious what the big misperceptions are of the journey-

17. SWSuzy Welch4:42

    Okay

18. SSSimon Sinek4:42

    ... that you take them on.

19. SWSuzy Welch4:43

    Two gigantic misperceptions. [sniffs] One is they think the journey's gonna be easy. They just need somebody to sort of tell them what to do. It's a very hard journey. The second is that it's woo-woo, that it's new age-y, that it's kinda soft and fuzzy, and you're gonna sort of float to your purpose, whereas in fact, this is the hardest work of our lives, is painting our self-portrait. Well, guess what? Uh, as the great philosopher since the beginning of time would tell us, knowing yourself is the hardest thing to know.

20. SSSimon Sinek5:10

    Yeah.

21. SWSuzy Welch5:10

    And so I take them on this journey that's brutal, frankly. The nickname for my class, Simon, the nickname for my class is the class where everyone cries, okay?

22. SSSimon Sinek5:19

    [laughs]

23. SWSuzy Welch5:20

    Um, [laughs] and you know, look, the biggest crybaby is me because they're up there telling their stories. At the last capstone of the class is they get up and they tell the story of their lives, the narrative of their lives for the next 40 years.

24. SSSimon Sinek5:30

    Wow.

25. SWSuzy Welch5:30

    They tell the story of what their lives will be. You know, there's not a dry eye in the house. I mean, people are sobbing, and I am sobbing in the back row trying to p- keep it together. Because when people are invited to figure out what their purpose is, and then they discover it, which happens in my class every semester, they're liberated.

26. SSSimon Sinek5:46

    Yeah.

27. SWSuzy Welch5:46

    Uh, they're free to go run in the right direction. Is there anything more emotional?

28. SSSimon Sinek5:50

    Yeah. When did you learn yours?

29. SWSuzy Welch5:52

    About age 60. I've always been in the neighborhood of it. The day I stepped into the classroom to teach Becoming You and I saw what was happening in front of my eyes, and I saw, um, all of my valuesAll of my aptitudes and all of my interests in the same moment all converging in teaching students, I, I could have levitated. And sometimes when I'm teaching, I think I am levitating. I'm so happy.

30. SSSimon Sinek6:19

    Yeah.

Episode duration: 35:46