Ordinarily, Becoming You is a podcast about the information we have to excavate, the decisions we need to make, and the actions we have to take, in order to live by design, not default. This week, in an unusually intimate episode, our host Suzy Welch talks about the words you need to say, three to be exact, to the same end. The only hitch is, you need to say them before it’s too late.

Suzy almost missed that chance with her lifelong best friend, Sue Jacobson, this week’s special guest, in an episode that brings us inside a hospital room awash with despair, and plumbs just what it means to demonstrate the very hard, very necessary act of mattering.

Yes, mattering. It sounds simple. It feels obvious. And yet, as this episode explores, most of us are getting it wrong.

Drawing on the research of Professor Zach Mercurio, and decades of real-life friendship, work, loss, and resilience, Suzy breaks mattering down into three teachable practices: Noticing, affirming, and needing. These aren’t platitudes. They’re behaviors. And when done right, their impact is profound.

You’ll hear live demonstrations with Suzy and Sue, honest missteps, and one extraordinary story that reveals why telling people “you matter” isn’t enough. Along the way, Suzy and Sue admit to friendship ruptures, leadership lessons, near-loss, and why vulnerability is the most underused advantage in work and life.

If you want to be a better boss, partner, friend – or simply a more impactful human – this episode will give you tools you can use today. Fair warning: it may also make you cry.

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