Why Isn't Everyone Doing This? with Emily Fletcher

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

Your intuition isn't quiet. It's just been out-shouted by your mind for years.

In this episode, Emily Fletcher sits down with Anna Gannon, an intuitive psychic and energy mastery teacher who has spent years training hundreds of people to hear their own inner guidance. Anna breaks down the ten distinct ways intuition actually speaks, from chills and gut feelings to taste, smell, and a knowing with zero evidence to back it up, and explains why the heart always talks first.

Anna also shares her own story: starting Ziva Meditation while deep in postpartum depression, then a solo pilgrimage to India where a kundalini awakening left her getting electrically shocked every five seconds for three months. She traces how her meditation foundation gave her the nervous system capacity to hold that awakening, and how Ziva Magic's emotional alchemy work helped her channel that raw current into her creativity and her marriage. The episode closes with a story of using her intuition to help heal her mother from a jungle hammock in Costa Rica.

In this episode, Anna explores:

The ten distinct ways intuition communicates, from sensing and feeling to clear hearing, seeing, taste, smell, and guidance

Why her almost seven-year-old son told her, “my heart always talks first, it's just my mind is so much louder”

A kundalini awakening in an Indian temple that left her electrified every five seconds for three months

Why she believes her meditation practice made that awakening survivable instead of destabilizing

How Ziva Magic's emotional alchemy helped her turn that life force into creativity and connection

Her mentor's line: “this work doesn't make your life easier, it just gives you more choices”

Healing her mother's body from across the world using nothing but intuition

Why she never says “just trust your gut blindly,” and what she teaches instead

Key Moments:

00:33 – The Kogi prophecy: the end falling into the beginning

05:02 – What an intuitive actually is

06:24 – Her son's line: “my heart always talks first”

09:26 – The ten ways intuition speaks

17:15 – Smelling radiation: a reading that revealed a client's cancer

21:52 – Why cells have two jobs: take care of themselves, take care of the whole

28:37 – Postpartum depression and the login that changed everything

32:42 – A solo pilgrimage to India, decided in one scroll

38:03 – The kundalini awakening in the temple

44:29 – Home, and electrified every five seconds for three months

48:44 – How Ziva Magic's emotional alchemy helped her channel the current

51:11 – How to start developing your own intuitive relationship today

1:01:29 – Healing her mother from a hammock in Costa Rica

✨ Ziva Magic is open.

This isn't just a course, it's a movement, a prayer, and the culmination of Emily's life's work. Ziva Magic blends ancient wisdom, modern science, and a powerful community of Magic Makers, all so you can learn how to magnetize the life of your wildest dreams. It's crafted to help you Visualize, Alchemize, and Magnetize the life you've always imagined, not only for you but for the planet. Grounded in science, but inspired by magic.

Inside, you'll merge with your future self, become the version of you who is already an energetic match for your dream, transmute fear into fuel, and learn to use your pleasure to pray.

The better you feel, the more magnetic you become.

Enroll now:
zivameditation.com/pages/zivamagic

🔗 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

What if the thing you've spent decades avoiding is the exact thing that's been trying to help you?

In this bonus student spotlight episode, Emily Fletcher sits down with Signy, a grocery store manager who now mentors underprivileged and neurodivergent people at work. Signy grew up in a deeply restrictive, religious household where women were raised to have babies, not opinions. Her father died by suicide when she was eight, and she spent decades pushing grief and anger down rather than feeling them, until those feelings started arriving anyway, in waves she couldn't predict or control.

Signy shares how Ziva Meditation gave her a nervous system baseline, and how Ziva Magic's Alchemize practice became her real turning point, teaching her to give her anger and grief the microphone instead of letting them steal it. She talks about the tsunami analogy that reframed everything, the moment her boss asked why she wasn't losing her mind under pressure that was breaking everyone else on her team, and the appointment where her own doctor told her she was healthier in her mid-forties than she'd been in years.

In this episode, Signy explores:

– Growing up in a household where women weren't meant to speak, vote, or have needs
– Her father's death when she was eight, and decades of grief she learned to push down
– The tsunami analogy: why feelings that never get a pressure release eventually take over
– Why Visualize was hardest for her at first: "tell me what I'm supposed to want, and I'll just want that"
– Her boss asking why she wasn't losing her mind while everyone else on her team was struggling
– Regina Thomashauer's line: "your mind can't handle any more, but your body is infinite"
– Why Alchemize became her biggest game-changer, faster than years of therapy alone
– Her doctor confirming she's healthier in her mid-40s than she was five years earlier
– How drinking simply fell away, without willpower or a dark night of the soul
– Turning her own healing into daily mentorship for people at work

Key Moments:

00:56 – Life before Ziva Magic: meditation as a baseline, anger and grief as "unwelcome guests"
04:47 – Growing up in a restrictive household where women weren't meant to speak
06:00 – Her father's death when she was eight, and decades of pushed-down grief
09:10 – The tsunami analogy: why repressed feelings eventually take the microphone
13:58 – "Tell me what I'm supposed to want": the hardest part of Visualize
17:00 – Her boss asking why she wasn't losing her mind like everyone else
18:31 – Regina Thomashauer: "your body is infinite"
23:48 – Her doctor's report: healthier in her mid-40s than she'd ever been
26:00 – How drinking fell away with ease
28:18 – What she'd tell someone too scared to try Magic Maker
33:18 – Turning her own healing into mentorship for others at work

✨ The Ziva Experience is open for enrollment. This is the final window.

Meditation to dissolve stress at the root. Embodied manifesting to turn your emotions into fuel. A mantra ceremony and a community built to hold you through all of it. Doors close Fri, Aug 7 at 11:59p ET.

Enroll now:
experience.zivameditation.com

🔗 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

On his intake form, he wrote one word: skeptical. By the last night of his retreat, he said something completely different.
In this bonus student spotlight episode, Emily Fletcher sits down with Danny, an optometrist, father, and husband who came to Ziva Magic a self-proclaimed skeptic and left, in his own words, a believer in magic. Danny is exactly the kind of person this work is built for: logical, raised to equate happiness with achievement, and never once spiritual before this. He joined on what he calls a rather last-minute decision, simply because the message on Emily's podcast resonated.
Danny shares the words that confused him at first—download, container, frequency—and how it felt to finally understand them. He describes the moment magic stopped being abstract and started showing up in a cup of tea, on a paddleboard, and playing trucks with his son. And he offers one of the clearest metaphors this show has heard for why logic alone isn't enough: a brand new laptop that never gets plugged into Wi-Fi.
In this episode, Danny explores:
The one word on his intake form, and the very different words he said on his last night
Why he introduces himself as father, husband, optometrist, in that order
Life before Ziva Magic: pure logic, no spirituality, and a constant need to do more
Why the dream itself was never the point, and what it actually indicates
His wife and coworkers noticing he's “happier at work now”
The jargon that confused him at first, and how he'd define magic now
Planting his first garden at 46, and finding actual magic in a carrot
The Wi-Fi analogy: why a great brain disconnected from spirit doesn't get far
Reclaiming the word pleasure, from tea to paddleboarding to playing trucks with his son
Waking up the body's own internal pharmacy, without any substances
Key Moments:
00:49 – His intake form: “I'm skeptical” to “I believe in magic” 02:54 – Life before Ziva Magic: pure logic, no spirituality 04:17 – Giving himself permission to ask what he actually wants 06:44 – The biggest shift: trusting things will fall into place 09:24 – The old pattern: always doing more to make his parents happy 10:00 – His wife's report: “you're happier at work now” 11:23 – The words that confused him: download, container, frequency 12:18 – Defining magic in his own words 15:24 – Planting his first garden, and finding magic in a carrot 18:58 – The Wi-Fi analogy: a great laptop that was never plugged in 21:27 – Reclaiming pleasure in tea, paddleboarding, and playing trucks with his son 22:47 – Waking up the internal pharmacy, and the lizard brain
✨ The Ziva Experience is open for enrollment. This is the final window.
Meditation to dissolve stress at the root. Embodied manifesting to turn your emotions into fuel. A mantra ceremony and a community built to hold you through all of it. Doors close Fri, Aug 7 at 11:59p ET.
Enroll now
🔗 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

Twelve years of practice, and one of the worst nights of his life, met in the same body.

In this episode, Emily Fletcher sits down with Oliver Lehne, an actor, playwright, and Ziva meditator she's known for over twelve years. Oliver came to meditation, by his own admission, to impress people. He arrived anxious, low on self-esteem, and constantly deferring to everyone else's opinion. What's emerged since is a man who trusts himself enough to create from that trust, including a play that landed a London producer within days of one conversation.

Oliver and Emily trace his path from meditation into embodied manifesting, and he shares the exact phrase that came through in his first real pleasure prayer, one he still writes in his journal every morning. He also opens up about the night his husband had a brain injury on Christmas Eve, and how the steadiness he'd built over a decade of practice carried him through it.

In this episode, Oliver explores:

Why he first came to meditation to impress people, and what he found underneath that

What adaptation energy is, and why running out of it launches the body into fight or flight

How surrender changed the way he shows up with his own parents

Why visualizing was always the hardest part of manifesting, and how feeling replaced picturing

The shift from performing his emotions as an actor to simply letting them move

The mantra that came through in his second pleasure prayer, and why he still journals it daily

How his play found a London producer within two days of one conversation

The night his husband had a brain injury on Christmas Eve, and the steadiness that carried him through

Why he believes meditation and manifesting compound each other

Key Moments:

00:33 – Life before Ziva: anxiety and chronic people-pleasing

05:08 – Why he first came to meditation: wanting to impress people

09:52 – Adaptation energy, defined

12:59 – How surrender changed his relationship with his parents

16:31 – The embodied manifesting formula: visualize, alchemize, magnetize

20:03 – Permission over performance

24:12 – The pleasure prayer that gave him his daily mantra

27:02 – How his play found a London producer in two days

31:06 – His husband's brain injury on Christmas Eve

34:09 – The miracle: walking out of the hospital alone

36:33 – His invitation to anyone still on the fence

🎥 The Magic Maker replays come down Aug 7.

If you haven't watched all three parts, or want to sit with them again before you decide, now's the time.

Watch the replays: magicmaker.zivameditation.com

🔗 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