#1 Career Coach: You’re Building A Life You Don’t Actually Want! (Do This Instead)
October 14, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readThe Values That Actually Drive Your Life (And Why Most People Get Them Wrong)
Susie Welch, a best-selling author and NYU professor who has spent years studying how people build careers and lives, argues that most of us are making decisions based on the wrong information. The popular advice to "follow your passion" is incomplete at best and destructive at worst. Welch's research with 200,000 people reveals that the real problem isn't that people don't know what they want—it's that they don't know what their values actually are, and they've never been taught how to use that knowledge to make decisions.
The Three-Legged Stool: Passion Alone Isn't Enough
Welch pushes back hard on the idea that passion should be the primary driver of life choices. "Of course you should follow your passion, but what if you suck at it?" she asks. She offers a more complete framework built on three data sets that must work together.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:32) **Follow Your Passion vs. Follow Your Data** - Susie challenges the popular advice "follow your passion" and introduces a three-legged stool framework.
- 2 (04:41) **Gen Z Is Nervous Because the Conveyor Belt is Broken** - Susie explains why Gen Z feels lost and why they refuse to wait for purpose.
- 3 (07:33) **The Values Gap: Why Gen Z Can't Get Hired** - Susie reveals the shocking disconnect between what Gen Z values and what hiring managers want.
- 4 (11:34) **What Top Performers Actually Value** - Susie shares data from top-performing companies showing the values that lead to career success.
- 5 (13:23) **The 10-10-10 Decision-Making Framework** - Susie tells the vulnerable story of her lowest moment and how she invented a simple system to stop making bad decisions.
- 6 (17:58) **How 10-10-10 Became a Global Tool** - Susie explains how a desperate idea became a book taught at Harvard and around the world.
- 7 (20:16) **Discernment vs. Decision-Making in the AI Age** - Susie argues that the most important skill for the future is not just decision-making, but discernment.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Suzy Welch is a bestselling author, NYU professor, and one of the most sought after career coaches in the world. She's taught thousands of students how to build lives that actually work, and in this episode, she breaks down why following your passion is terrible advice, how to figure out who you really are, and the exact frameworks that separate people who build the lives they want from people who stay stuck wishing.
In this episode, you'll learn:
- Why following your passion is terrible advice
- The Gen Z values crisis that is making finding work so hard
- The 10-10-10 framework
- Why only 2% of people are living fully authentic lives
- Why failure is your entrance fee into the “Society of Interesting People”
Code for 20% off The Values Bridge: BIGDEAL
Link to Suzy's accounts: lnk.to/suzywelch!bigdeal
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(00:00:00) Introduction: Follow Your Passion Is Terrible Advice
(00:01:08) The Three-Legged Stool: Passion, Aptitude, and Values
(00:07:31) Gen Z's Values Crisis: The 2% Problem
(00:10:52) The Values Bridge: 200,000 Data Points on What Drives Success
(00:12:53) The 10-10-10 Framework: Decision Making That Actually Works
(00:21:06) The Six-Word Memoir Exercise: Writing Your Life Forward
(00:23:26) The Four Horsemen of Values Destruction
(00:26:29) The Authenticity Gap: Why 98% of People Aren't Living Their Values
(00:29:27) Stop Looking Backward: Why Therapy Isn't Enough
(00:34:47) The 360 Feedback Reality Check: How the World Actually Experiences You
(00:39:10) The Career Traits Compass: What Leaders Actually Need Today
(00:49:19) The Society of Interesting People: Vernon Jordan's Gift
(00:57:05) We Can Do Hard Things: Everything Good Is Hard
(01:00:13) Raising Kids Who Aren't A-Holes: The Character-First Approach
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