140. Why Isn't Everyone Living Their Purpose? with Suzy Welch

What if you've been lied to about what it actually takes to find your purpose?

In this episode, Emily Fletcher sits down with Suzy Welch — NYU Stern professor, New York Times bestselling author of Becoming You, and one of the most trusted voices in the world on purpose and career strategy. Suzy walks Emily through the research-backed framework she teaches at NYU (the same one that makes grown adults cry in the front row), and the two go deep on faith, grief, and what really pulls people away from the life they were meant to live.

Suzy opens up about the “Four Horsemen of Values Destruction,” the forces she's identified that quietly hijack people's purpose: expectations, expedience, events, and economic security. She shares the eerily universal “widow's dream” she experienced after her husband died, and why she doesn't believe anyone can do life without prayer. She also tells the story of a woman whose family was torn apart after a tragic boating accident, and how Suzy's own decision-making method helped bring that family back from the edge, including pulling her father back from the brink of suicide. It's a rare mix of hard data, personal faith, and real transformation.

In this episode, Suzy explores:

• The Four Horsemen of Values Destruction: expectations, expedience, events, and economic security
• Why only about 11% of people actually want to “change the world” — and why that's perfectly fine
• Her framework for finding purpose: values, aptitudes, and interests
• The Values Bridge assessment, and why it's built to strip out social desirability bias
• The “widow's dream”: the strange, common experience she and other widows rarely talk about
• What daily prayer has meant to her since her husband's death
• The story of a family nearly destroyed by tragedy, and how her method helped save a father from suicide
• Why her NYU class is nicknamed “the class where everyone cries”
• Her real-time framework for deciding between two major life-changing opportunities
• Why she believes we're in the middle of a purpose crisis, and how AI is accelerating it

Key Moments:

• 0:00 – Welcome + why this episode is called “Why Isn't Everyone Living Their Purpose?”
• 3:00 – Suzy's definition of purpose: the intersection of values, aptitudes, and interests
• 4:59 – What prayer means to her, and life since her husband's death
• 7:38 – Her NYU class nickname: “the class where everyone cries”
• 10:29 – The student who kept “getting” Zumba teacher as her purpose and couldn't accept it
• 11:47 – Horseman #1: Expectations
• 12:05 – Horseman #2: Expedience
• 14:31 – Horseman #3: Events (and the story of going back to the Today Show after her husband's death)
• 16:11 – Horseman #4: Economic security
• 23:59 – The Values Bridge assessment, and why it strips out social desirability bias
• 24:17 – Why only about 11% of people actually have “changing the world” as a top value
• 29:10 – The widow's dream: the moment a friend asked, “Are you having the dream?”
• 36:57 – Deciding between two major opportunities in real time, using her own framework
• 50:13 – The stranger who stopped her on the subway mid job-decision
• 55:16 – The family torn apart by a fishing boat tragedy, and how her method helped save a father from suicide
• 59:48 – Where to find Suzy, and her closing thoughts

✨ Where to find Suzy Welch:

• Book: Becoming You
• Podcast: Becoming You with Suzy Welch (wherever you listen to podcasts)
• Take the Values Bridge assessment: thevaluesbridge.com
• Website: suzywelch.com
• Instagram: @suzywelch

🔗 More from Emily & Ziva:

• Learn Ziva Meditation: preview.zivameditation.com
• Free masterclass: learn.zivameditation.com
• Get 15% off with promo code WHYTHIS: whythis.zivameditation.com
• Follow us on Instagram: @zivameditation