Do I Matter Here? Jennifer Breheny Wallace on the Need We Keep Ignoring | Dealing With Feeling

So mattering is a basic human need. It's not a nice to have. — I can imagine there being a perception that this is soft. — Think it's soft until they see the data — on engagement and what drives engagement. You are here to learn and succeed. Not to be better for your own resume, but others. — Just one thing I can do today to help me feel like I matter more or help someone else feel like they matter. Hi everyone, welcome to the Dealing with Feeling podcast. I'm Mark Brackett, founding director of the Yell Center for Emotional Intelligence and author of the bestselling books Permission to Feel and Dealing with Feeling. Today's podcast is all about mattering. Have you thought about that? What does it mean to feel like you matter? Do you feel like you matter these days? Are you helping other people feel like they matter? Today's guest is Jenny Wallace. She is an American journalist. She is an author of a best-selling book called Never Enough and the author of a new book called Mattering. I just loved our conversation and I know you will too. — Welcome Jenny. — Uh thanks for having me Mark. — Of course. So, we're here to talk about — mattering. — Exactly. And I'm excited to talk with you about this a because I've known you since before you wrote the book. Um I know your first book and um just I'm really curious firstly um given the world we're living in right now, you know, why mattering? Why now? — Yeah. Well, so I didn't intend to write a book so quickly after never enough. Um, but in my com which the first book was about achievement culture and achievement pressure and you know mental health struggles among youth. But what I heard over and over again in my interviews with families was we would talk about the kids and then towards the end of the interview as I was walking out the door the parents would say, you know, I feel this never enough feeling too. Mhm. — I work as a doctor at a major medical center and I feel like I'm being death by a thousand clicks, as one doctor put it, that everything is admin. Uh I'm not able to be with the patients the way I want to be. Uh first responders who felt burnt out, [clears throat] — educators who feel felt so unappreciated in their roles. Mh. — Um, and so I thought, wow, I'm writing this book about mattering for young people when actually the adults in their lives are struggling with feeling like they're never enough and like they don't matter in the world today. — I'm going to jump right for the uh the tough one if you don't mind. — Yeah. — Which is, you know, I'm a psychologist by training as you know and so you know I wrote a book permission to feel because I didn't have permission to feel. You wrote a book called Mattering. And so I'm just curious, how does that sit with you personally as a concept? — Well, boy, do I wish I had known about mattering through all of my life transitions. — So, um, you know, I when I moved, so I just give you a story, the first one that pops into my mind as you ask that question. When my husband and I got married and I was 32 years old, we left New York to go move to London. At the time, I'd been working at 60 Minutes for almost 10 years. Uh, I left my job to freelance. I left my friends of decades. I left my family and moved to another country. And I was the one who drove this move. So, this was the transition that I chose and pushed for. And almost overnight, I felt incredibly lonely. So painfully lonely. And at 32, I was like, why am I struggling with this? Why can't I cope with this? Like, this doesn't make sense. And so, there was shame involved with feeling so lonely. And what I wish I had known was that it was my mattering that had collapsed — and that I had agency to build it back. Um, you know, this is true of all life transitions and we've all gone through so many of them when the roles that we, you know, leaned on to make us feel valued and were so obvious in the way that we add valued uh that the roles that were so obvious in the way that we added value to the world. um when those vanish either through death or divorce or an empty nest or retirement um we struggle and that struggle is so normal and I wish I had known that. I wish I had been able to say your loneliness there's a solution to it and it's mattering. Mhm. The one thing

you're making me — think about though is identity because, you know, I'm thinking about my uncle Marvin, who you know, I speak about a lot. When he was older, he started teaching courses on mattering to be honest with you, in Florida. And the requirement was that you had to be over 80 and you could never speak about your career or your children or grandchildren. It was all about your purpose and meaning in life now. And it was this f I went to go watch him do this and it was kind of mesmerizing. But one of the things he found, and I'm curious if this relates to your thinking, is that people like even your story, you kind of lost your identity as the 60 Minutes celebrity person and I don't matter anymore. And so, how do we not tie our mattering to our careers, our success, our relationships, and how do we make it um something that we have that transcends all of that? — Yeah. Well, I think what you're hitting on is something really important. Um, but I believe we have to matter to ourselves, right? that it begins there as the foundation, — but that mattering as social beings, we crave social proof that we matter out there in the world. And so whether it is our jobs, family, our friends, our neighbors, um you know, a higher god um or you know, spiritual being that you matter to. I think we need to also matter to things outside of ourselves. Um and so I would say that yes 60 minutes that my career identity certainly collapsed but it was also that I didn't have any other safety nets around me. I didn't have my family, my friends reminded neighbors who knew my name, — right? I moved to a place where I felt invisible and because actually I was invisible there. — Um so I think we have to matter to ourselves but I also in all the domains of our life or as many as we can. So I think what I would say is um the way we can have a st a sense of sturdiness in our mattering is to be mindful about our mattering portfolio and our mattering portfolio is ourselves, our family and friends, our colleagues and the wider society. — So um I think that's what makes us sturdy. — Okay, I hear you. Um, but now I'm com now I'm not confused because I've read your book, but I know that people listening are going to be asking for a definition. — So let's get the clear definition and the components of your mattering. — Great. So uh I define mattering the way the researchers define mattering uh which is the idea of feeling valued and adding value. So feeling valued for who we are deep inside away from our successes and achievements and also having an opportunity to add value back to our family, our friends, our colleagues and the society around us. — I think people have all heard of the word mattering. — Yeah. — But I don't think they understand that it's actually been studied and there are actual ingredients to mattering. Um, and so the way I've come to think about them is what I call the said framework. Those are s aid are the four main components to mattering. So feeling significant, feeling appreciated, invested in, and depended on. And that's important for us to feel those things, but it's also important for us to feed that sense of mattering to the people we care about, the people around us. So I could quickly go through those just to — let's go through each one. — Great. So significance. Uh importance. I was struck in my interviews when I asked people when did you feel like you matter? Name a time. It was never an award at work or a toast at a birthday. It was never these big moments. people were reflecting on the small moments of mattering in everyday life such as um a neighbor coming over with a pot of soup uh when they were sick or a colleague checking in after a tough day at work. Um it is in these we as social beings crave to matter in the everydayness of life. We mundane. Uh so that is what significance is. Appreciation I've come to think about as appreciating the doer behind the deed.

So it's not just thanking someone for you know always being the person to gather the colleagues for happy hour — but rather thanking the person for being a community builder that they are so integral to how close-knit and collaborative this team is because of their efforts. So invested in is the idea that we have people who are invested in our goals, who are there to support us through setbacks, and that we have a chance to invest in other people's goals and support them through setbacks. It's the idea that we're not going through this world alone. Mhm. — Um and that also is dependence being relied on having people that we can rely on and people who rely on us so that if we weren't here on this earth um the world wouldn't be as good a place. — So I've really come to think about mattering as the story we tell ourselves about our place in the world. Do people value me? Do they notice me? Do strangers notice me? Um do people listen to what I have to say? Do I have a voice at work? Uh, do people rely on me? Would I be missed if I wasn't here? — That's mattering at its core. — Of course, I have a million questions from a developmental standpoint from I'm thinking first developmentally. So, you're a parent. You have great kids. A lot of parents are going to be listening to this. What are the top things that parents can do from early childhood to and I want to put this out there because of what can they do to support healthy mattering because my hunch is that there like all constructs in psychology there is the obsession with mattering and so if we can kind of the dos and the don'ts in terms of supporting healthy versus narcissistic mattering Yes. So, healthy mattering. I just um published a white paper with Harvard Center on the developing child about mattering in the earliest of days, right? Making eye contact with the baby, responding to what they have to say as they mature and get older, relying on them, right? having them go and clean up or set the table, giving them meaningful chores um so that they understand that they are dependent on and relied on and a significant part of their family. Um it's also being careful about um knowing them for who they are deep inside away from their achievements. So really getting to know the child. I call it in my book Never Enough, getting a PhD in your child, knowing how they uniquely tick. What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses? Um it is affection. It's giving them affection. I did a podcast with Scott Galloway and he said to me the um growing up his mother was very affectionate with him and that he's come to believe that affection is the difference between thinking someone loves you and knowing that they do. So being affectionate, being outwardly affectionate with a child, um it is really being careful when our children inevitably disappoint us, which they will to separate the deed from the doer. So they are never bad. The behavior is not what we expect from them, but they themselves, we love them unconditionally. And what I've come to realize, my first book, as you know, was about achievement culture and about how so many young people felt like they only mattered when they got the high GPA, when they had a certain weight on the scale, when they were popular, etc. Um, and what I've come to understand and really believe is that parents today play a special role in a child's development in a world that sells them the idea that certain people matter more. Uh, that they are never enough. That at home our children ne can never question their value. They worth. We play a role in sending countercultural messages at home that in this home you are enough — that I love you no matter what. — Um and you know as teens develop right it mattering starts at home and then it goes outward and mattering to peers is really important. Mattering to teachers is really important. And I often say this to parents because there seems to be, it wasn't true when I was growing up, but seems to be today this real friction between parents and teachers. I think many parents see teachers as gatekeepers — uh for their children's academic achievement, where they're going to go to college, etc., which really pits parents against teachers. And what

I say to parents is your children deserve a relationship with their teacher that they get a real sense of mattering from the adults in their lives. Do not undermine that relationship. Um Sonia Luther who you know who was one of the world one of the country's leading researchers on resilience talked about in one of her studies how teens who sensed an acron acrimonious relationship between parents and teachers struggled the way children struggle in a divorce. Uh feeling like their loyalty had to go to one and not the other. So we really do our kids a disservice when we don't surround them with people, with coaches, with teachers, with neighbors that also feed their sense of mattering. Um, and also insisting that our children add value to the world around us. That part of being a, you know, a member of our family is that you are going to do volunteer work. add value. You have a role to play. I'll tell you one simple way of uh emphasizing mattering that I've come to do in my own house. I have um one of three of my children is uh you know very quick to call me out on things and in seventh grade he was feeling a bit crushed by the uh the rising expectations at school and he came home one day frustrated and he said why do I have to know how to uh stand up in front of a classroom and recite a poem? No one's ever going to ask me to do that. Why do I have to learn this about science? I'm not going to be a doctor. Why do I have to know these things? He was really feeling disengaged and annoyed at school. And so I sat him down and I said, "Listen," I said, "You are here to learn and succeed, not to be better for your own resume, but others. You have to learn how to stand up in a classroom and advocate because one day you are going to have people that you come across that you're going to need to advocate on their behalf. You have to learn how to be a strong writer because again you have to support people whose voices aren't heard. You have to know about science because your generation is going to be tasked with solving some of the biggest problems our world has ever seen. So it is not for you. It is so that you can learn to be better for others. In our achievement culture, we have made the focus so narrow on our children that they have to get their resumes in order that we have blocked this sense of mattering. But it is not a nice to have. Feeling like we matter, that we are valued by those around us and that we add meaningful value back is a critical human need and we've been treating it like a nice to have and because of that people are suffering. Well, you know, you made me think about uh something that I haven't I don't know if I've written about, but you know, having been a professor now for 25 years here at Yale, you know, it's I've had a lot of experience with students who come from, you know, they have the highest grade point averages, they have SAT scores that were better than mine, play instruments I never heard of, and know more than I know about many things. And at the same time, uh I'm trying to teach them emotional intelligence and there's resistance. You know, I didn't need emotional intelligence to get into Yale. And I was like, well, you're going to need to get out. Um, but one of the things in my course that has consistently come up when I get students to finally kind of just chill out and reflect and um, and I ask them about their development, they say they feel like they were manufactured, which is a very strong term, which breaks my heart. you know, they feel like their parents and their teachers and their and the world around them have there's like these pieces of a puzzle that you have to put together to be the portrait of that graduate who goes into the Ivy League, which is where I teach. Um, and so it's almost as if they have become um resistant to mattering — because it's been pulled out of them. — Can you riff on that? — I believe they think mattering is contingent. — Yes. — I think they think that certain people matter more. Those with the high grades um those [clears throat] with the big houses matter more. Those with the social media following matter more. So I think what you were hitting on is values. — So some of the research that I have found so fascinating in researching about mattering and achievement culture is research by Tim Casser on how our values impact our well-being. So I'll just simplify it for the podcast, make it really quick. So Tim

Casser and others have studied values all over the world and argue that we roughly have the same values no matter where we live, what country we live in. To study them, they separate them into intrinsic values and exttrinsic values. Intrinsic values are things like wanting to be a good person, grow spiritually, be good to the environment, be pro-social, uh invest in your relationships, um grow like with emotional intelligence. Um, extrinsic values are things like wanting the big house, the high status job, a certain image, a certain amount of popularity. Values operate like a zero sum game. — So, the more time and energy you spend pursuing extrinsic values, those materialistic values, the less room you have in your life for pursuing the intrinsic ones. And here's why this matters. Because extrinsic values are linked with negative mental health and substance abuse disorder and intrinsic values are linked with the well-being we want for ourselves and our kids. And it is not that people in high achieving communities or in America don't have good values. It is that our extrinsic values are constantly being activated. — They're being activated in the classroom, in high school, with their peers, with their peers parents, with social media, with the wider media. And so really a job of a parent is to become that counterweight to those values that they are constantly being confronted by. Uh Tim Caster gave me the advice instead of one you know one big lecture every year about our family values that we should be peppering them into everyday conversations having a hundred one minute conversations about values throughout the day. Um, and the way I've come to think about it is that values put our kids at risk. Extrinsic values put them at risk. So, we need to be talking about values and how they can put them at risk just like we do drugs and alcohol. Um, one other thing that I, well, just I found fascinating in this research on uh, values and this is heartbreaking um, is the idea that people who are highly focused on extrinsic values, materialism, popularity, image, it is not necessarily that they are born that way. It's that they are often missing deep nourishing relationships. And so they hope that the big house, the certain image, the number of likes will win them the connections they crave. And of course it doesn't. — Yeah, that's I mean there's decades of research in the happiness space, you know, that shows that as well. And I can say in my own life, you know, I mean, I do, you know, I do prefer driving a nicer car than not a nicer car, but um but I'm still the same person driving in it. And the that piece, you know, on mattering um is significant and I appreciate the values piece. I was just actually uh working with a new funer to my center who happens to be of enormous wealth and the top concern they have for their kids is about their values because they said, you know, we grew up poor but now we're very wealthy. We're not changing our new lifestyle for our kids. They're going to grow up in a very different world than we grew up in. And my only hope is what do I need to do? because they're going to have everything around them. But how do I help them have those values? And so I'm curious, what are your thoughts about that? What would you're meeting with this parents. They're young parents. They have four children. They're billionaires. They're living in a castle and they want their kids to have values. What does it look like at the, you know, on the private jet or in the family room watching television or at dinner? I think it's hard to live a certain lifestyle uh and not have kids exposed constantly to the extrinsic values. Um I think some of the best advice I've been given by parents who have lived this and raised kids with solid values um is to live under your means. That if you are a parent that has a lot of money uh to live under your means. Here's why. I talk about this in my first book, Never Enough, something that I call the encore effect. And it is the idea that kids, all kids, the American dream is to not just replicate your upbringing, but to do even better, — right? So, what happens when your parents are at the top of the ladder? How can you compete with that? Mhm. — Um, some of the other families that I spoke with that were at the top of the letter had really explicit conversations with their kids about values, uh

explicit conversations about how they defined success, uh, the people in their life that they thought were living successful lives, — um, and surrounding themselves with people with shared values. So, I think the probably the number one tip I would offer is to make sure your social circle shares your values — because I think our kids see I think one of the best things actually that I've ever done for my own children and I kind of did this by accident is for our family friends to be A+ humans. — Yeah. to have the most extraordinary values that any of them uh could have and they do have one-on-one relationships with my kids and it is perfect and our values are shared. — So, I would say that has been I think the one of the most critical pieces growing up, you know, having my kids grow up in New York City are the families that I surround them with. — Yeah. — With shared values. So, it's not just coming from me. They're seeing it from the people that I choose to be with — 100%. I mean, the circle of influence is broad and um having worked in New York City schools, public and private, you know, and I do family presentations as do you. You can get a vibe from you know the uh the life space as we call it uh of these kids. What about this? So the uh years ago I did a study uh where it was a study that never actually happened because I got kicked out. I'll tell you the story. I was desperate to study people who were uh trying out or auditioning for American Idol. Um and I wanted to just study these people who wanted to, you know, be on stage and do their song. And of course, you know, you remember that show or you may still watch it. the um there's a lot of variability in skill and there are more than you know maybe you know uh there are a lot of people who you know show up because they've been told by their families and their coaches that they're I mean go do it you're going to be the next Mariah Carey Whitney Houston you know whoever and they can't even hold a note And it's embarrassing for them or you know won't judge it but it's you know it's they're a little their sense of their self-awareness around their talent is um needs some development and my hunch is that comes in part from this over ma over mattering hovering like honey you're amazing I love you know you Yes, you can make it. You can be the best. You are the best singer. Get up there and go do that. And then the kid has a false sense of self. So, how does that play into your work? — So, it's so interesting that you bring this up. So, the researcher who originally conceptualized Matter's name was Mars Rosenberg and he is very famous for creating the Rosenberg self-esteem scale. — Yeah, I know it. — And right. So, uh and it's still being used today. He um his son Paul Rosenberg is a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins and I tracked him down and I got some of uh Mars's actually um unpublished papers that I was able to get from Paul with permission to use in my new book mattering which was so thrilling as a nerd myself. I loved it. Um, but I asked Paul as a psychiatrist, do you think your father saw the limits of self-esteem and saw mattering as the next evolution? And he said yes because what mattering is uh it is it has a bakedin sense of humility and by that I mean that you are balancing your own needs, your own feeling valued with the needs of others. So it is not um I matter more than others. I mean by its very nature we all matter equally. — Right? If one person matters more then all of our mattering is contingent. — Correct? — So this so in my mind where this plays out is that true mattering is balancing mattering to the self and mattering to others which bakes in a sense of humility. um I call false mattering or the fool's gold of mattering what you're talking about the narcissism um the uh you know just um it's not true mattering — I'm just thinking about the desperation in this crazy world that we're living in that parents often feel because they want their kids to matter and the and

the not great choices they make to create that false sense of mattering. So what do you what advice do you have there? — So I would say um the first piece of advice I would say might seem counterintuitive but I'm going to say it anyway. Uh that parents need to focus on their own mattering to themselves. — So I think we have a generation of parents who have become very uh childfocused and families that have become child- le. And I'm not here to judge it. Um, you know, Bnee Brown, I heard her in an interview give this great kind of framework for thinking about organizing your family, which, um, just makes so much sense to me that there are some families that are child focused, adult focused, and some families that are family focused. — And so, we happen to, my family is a family focused family. So, sometimes I take priority, sometimes my husband takes priority, sometimes one of the kids takes priority. and we talk about it explicitly when that's happening. Um, lots of families I know and some of them are my dear friends have child focused families and that works well for them. They love it. They don't mind every weekend giving up their social lives to be on the sidelines. What is um what is difficult for childfocused families is that those parents have to be extra mindful about helping their kids balance that sense of I am I matter but so does everybody else. — So even though we as a family are prioritizing you for several years and going on your travel teams and all of that, you also have to give back in other ways. You it's not just all about you all the time. So, I think for child-focused families, you have to be more mindful about this um this balance. Mhm. Yeah. You're making me think a bit about something I've been working on, [clears throat] which is having an other orientation and um and even in terms of the work I do on emotion regulation that we often get very self-focused, you know, like and you start when you're ruminating, it's like I need a strategy and you know, I'm feeling this way and I need, you know, and sometimes the best strategy is go help somebody out. 100%. I mean to me that is my number one coping strategy that when I find myself so f self-focused I say oh boy pick your head up and look out and go see all the other needs in the world and stop looking in the mirror. One woman I interviewed for mattering had this great line. She said if you're going through a painful transition and you are so self-focused pick your head up, stop looking in the mirror for an hour a week and go make yourself useful. that not only do you have an opportunity, you have a responsibility on this earth to be useful. — Yeah. Beautiful. All right. So, I'm thinking now I'm going to be selfish uh because you can be my therapist for this little bit of time. Um I feel as I think about your work and read your book that I am a kind of mur mcurial matterer or mattering person. I feel like it's like this really weird roller coaster ride where I wake up some days and I'm like I have purpose. I have meaning. I'm making the world a better place. I've worked with 7 million children and I'm and then the day after that I like I give a keynote and I'm like I'm on the top of my world and then I go back to my hotel room and I'm like I have no purpose in life. What am I doing? — You are like everyone else. — No good. you are not alone in that feeling. Um I'm going to give you two reasons why I think that is and then two ideas that might work for you. — I think it's because we no longer So when we were growing up, Mark, we ma mattering was baked into daily life. — We knew our neighbors. They relied on us. We relied on them. We most likely attended some religious service where we, you know, felt this unconditional worth. Um we belonged to 4 clubs. We belong to [clears throat] bowling leagues per Robert Putnham and now we are you know these one household villages trying to be everything for each other. So we are not getting those signals daily that we are valued and that we add value. So I think that roller coaster is rooted in what modern life has become. — Um so that's number one. Number two, here's what I do to sort of counteract that. Um, and I also think some of it is the negativity bias, which is something that we're all wired by evolution to focus on the negative more than the

positive. So, I think that's also playing into this. [snorts] So, here's what I do. Two things I do. So, I hate journaling, which is probably a terrible thing to admit to, but I'm a journalist. — I have no patience for it. patience. But here's something I do do, and it's so easy. It takes 30 seconds. I have a little notebook next to my bed and I write and this is because of researching mattering that I do this. When was one moment today when I felt valued and what was one moment today where I added value even in a small way. So like one day I was literally writing for 8 to I don't even know how many hours. I was so self-focused. I didn't add value to anybody. I went to the supermarket and ah the best parking spot right in front of the supermarket opened up and I was ready to pull in and then I saw this person out of the corner of my eye like look so sad that they weren't getting the spot and I let them have it. So I wrote that in my journal that night. Where did I add value? I gave somebody the best spot in the supermarket. Are you kidding? They were so psyched. They waved frantically. They were thrilled. Um [snorts] so that's one thing. Here's the other thing that I think high achieving people can um neglect about mattering which is mattering to ourselves and connecting to um you know our own needs right you are you Mark are needed by educators by students by your this the staff that works for you uh you have a lot of needs that need to be prioritized in your daily life and I have a feeling probably like me you're not always great about prioritizing your own needs. I don't know if that's true or not. It's true for me. So, I have this practice that I do now every day. — When I'm brushing my teeth, — I think about what is one small need today that I need to fill for myself so that I could show up as my best self for the people who are relying on me. — Some days it's I need a 45minute walk with my best friend. Other days are I need 45 minutes by myself in a cozy corner reading a delicious book and sipping my tea. But tuning in to our own needs and what we need and to not just prioritize our needs or fill our needs when we've gone through the to-do list when everybody else's needs have been filled then we can fill our own needs. I am saying here be radical and fill your need every day. You don't have to prioritize yourself every day. You have to meet it. Exactly. — Correct. A simple pleasure that you are worthy of. — Yeah. My It's funny you think I all I can think of is, you know, I have an obsessive compulsive disorder around good coffee. And so it really matters to me, no pun intended. And I'll often if I'm traveling or with someone I'll go on a thing and like search for the best coffee shop and I'm like it's just like a five-minute walk. It's of course it's like a 45 minute walk to this coffee shop but it's like my thing and it just it will change everything for me just to have that experience. — Um — that's because you prioritized yourself — right — and we know we don't do that. Of course, everybody else is annoyed at me that I, you know, like I thought it was three blocks away. I'm like, "Oh, why, you know, a little further than that. " — But, um, how do you, um, you know, we spoke about my Yale students obviously, you know, we care about them. We spoke about our wealthy friends and family members who have, you know, lots of things and they can refocus on values. How do you see this applying to our more marginalized communities right now? I mean, in our country, just to be frank, as you well know, someone who is acutely aware of what's happening in the news, a lot of people feel like they don't matter whatsoever, and they're made to feel as if they have no value. What do you believe we can do at a societal level to shift that? — Well, that's a really big question, and I wish I had the answer to it. um what I have seen work in my reporting is mattering at the hyper local level. — So if you are in a neighborhood, friend group, if you are in a workplace where people are experiencing that to be really mindful of it and to feed that sense of mattering because they are not getting it necessarily at the societal level. So, it is really prioritizing them is really where it is and to think about mattering hyperlocally. — I think you're right there. You know, it's funny cuz the first kind of season of this podcast that I have now um really was hyperfocused on um creating an emotion revolution, which is still my only goal in life, which includes mattering. Um

and I asked celebrities like Duff McCagan from Guns and Roses and he's like, "Dude, like I asked him something like imagine a world. " He's like, "I can't imagine the world. Like I don't have that. It's like that's too much for me, but I can imagine like where my home and my block where I live, you know, in Seattle. And I can imagine like really creating something there. And then they're going to have friends and family and it will grow. " And I know you're like, you know, the reason why we write books is because we want to change society. I mean, the world. Otherwise, we wouldn't put the pressure on ourselves and spend endless hours doing this. We want to get the word out. But I think your point is an important one which is that the we can get lost in trying to control things that we actually don't have any control over which I think can for me um deflates my mattering because I feel like I'm like I spent 25 years of my life in that what is going on here you know like nobody cares about these concepts how is that possible? But then I realized what we have 5,000 schools that do this work and those communities they actually are doing great work with it. So translate that for me in terms of helping our listeners apply this to their lives. — Yeah. So I just one area um so I what I try to think about when I think about mattering are cultures of mattering that are around me so mattering to my neighbors which I'm very mindful about um feeling valued and adding value to them uh connecting them to the impact you know closing the loop when they give me advice or they offer kindness to close it and say I took your advice and here's what happened. So really helping people in my everyday life connect to their the impact that they make. — Um they're mattering. Uh but I also think about larger cultures like the workplace. I think the workplace is um you know they the researchers call it the long arm of the job. What happens at work doesn't stay at work. It spills over into other domains of our lives. So when we don't feel like we matter at work, when we feel like we don't have a voice, um when decisions are made about our jobs without consulting us, when we feel replaceable, when we feel unknown and lonely, it is very hard after 8 10 hours to go home and act as the first responder to our kids struggles. So in my mind the workplace and also when you think about the long arm of the job there's also research that finds that when you don't feel like you have agency or a voice at work you are less likely to be politically engaged in healthy ways. Um so in my mind mattering at work is actually how we help the youth mental health crisis how we help civic disengagement uh in civility in our society. So that's doable. Creating workplaces where employees are connected to their impact, where they know how they are making a difference to their colleagues, to the company's bottom line, maybe even to society at large. — Feeding a sense of mattering, which by the way, — this is not like um a polyiana idea. — It is 70% of employees today report being disengaged. Disengagement is not laziness. Disengagement is a coping strategy for feel when you feel like you do not matter. It is painful. And when you have no agency around that, the only agency you have is to disengage. So, and disengagement leads to a lack of productivity. It's a nightmare, a lack of loyalty. So, even the least human- centered companies, workplaces should be incentivized to lead with mattering — because mattering is what drives engagement. engagement is what drives uh productivity. Productivity is what drives profit. Um and so I do think that that's a place where we could really tackle this. — Agree. In my research, what I have found in terms of the emotion research, one of the top emotions in education at least, and it's more widely I think the same when we [clears throat] ask people about how they want to feel, not how you feel, but what is your hoped for emotion? The top emotion is appreciated, — which is interesting. And it's not about I would [clears throat] be I would, you know, I would feel more appreciated if you did this or gave me that. The true core and what we found in our education research was acknowledgement. — Yes. — Like just see me like — Yes. — Maybe just say thank you once in a while — and name my impact. Yeah. Right. It's

not that hard. The problem is we have just so much on our plates — that we don't connect people to the impact. But I have stories in the book in my mattering book of companies that have done extraordinary work around this. A nonprofit that had a bulletin board up that said tell someone how they made a difference and people were directly impacted to their um directly connected to their impact. Someone in an accounting office um got a note from a colleague saying, "Because you stayed this weekend and combed through our budget, we were able to save the money so that a family could stay in their apartment and not be evicted. Your work matters so much. Development, because of the money you raised, we were able to give hundreds of coats to the youth in our care. " connecting people specifically beyond a thank you, connecting them to, you know, appreciating who they are, not just what they do. And it reminds me that there's some skill building that needs to go into this because first there's a mindset piece of it which is you know I'm not you know I think you can imagine that a lot of the you know and my book release I did a lot of I just wrote a piece on this which I'll share with you at another time about my interviews with all the bros. So, I did like all the podcasts, you know, with these dudes that are like high performance and like longevity, you know, and now all of a sudden I'm like, "So, how you feeling? " And they're like, "Well, I don't care about how I feel really. I just care that is what you're going to teach me going to help me live longer and be stronger. " And so, I just think that's an interesting kind of connection there around the motivational piece. And I'm saying that because I would imagine that people who are like these particular men who are leaders in the workforce and women too um like that behavior of it's it feels um I can imagine there being a perception that this is soft. — Right. I think it's soft until they see the data — on engagement and what drives engagement that when employees feel like their employer cares about their well-being, they are x number of times more likely to stay loyal to the company um you know more likely to uh recommend it to friends. I mean there is there's real data out of Gallup out of Great Place to work uh that shows that engaged employees are more productive and those companies are more profitable. — Yeah. And it also my hunch, you know, as we kind of like I want to bring this into kind of really clear um actionable steps for people. It seems like it's not like there's this here is your mattering checklist, you know, in terms of how you need to behave. It seems as if there is a bit of creativity involved in it, which I think is important that it's not like for my work, it's not like breathing is going to answer the world's problems. Like every, you know, we've been breathing forever. It's like there's still problems. And so the techniques that people use to support other people um in having that sense of mattering. What are your recommendations there for how do you find that way in? — It's a great question. So we all know the golden rule which is do unto others as you would have them do unto you. When it comes to mattering, I think of what uh has been called the platinum rule, which is do unto others as they would like you to do unto them, — which requires what psychologists call attunement. Tuning in to the person, knowing your colleagues, right? Think of attunement like those old radio dials where they're static. Remember when we used to have to like sift through the static to get to the station? That is what attunement is. It's noticing when somebody appears off or their tone isn't right or their body language is sending you a signal and caring enough to um to ask them about it to ask them how they're doing. So, um attunement is what makes all of the strategies of mattering feel unique to the person that you are trying to foster that sense of mattering with. So, I have so many practical tips. Um, but I think all of it really rests on being attuned to the people around you. — By the way, one of my colleagues is writing a book about attunement in the first three months of life.

— An entire book on that — because it starts that early. does — and it's quite remarkable and how that kind of continues through attachment into our adult relationships etc. — Yes, it all matters. — Yeah, there you go. You have the easiest, you know, title of all. So, Jenny, what are the and we covered a lot and you know, my style, as you know, is kind of a little bit over here, there, and everywhere, nowhere, and somewhere. Um, what is left for people to hear from you before they read? — I would love to give them a challenge that I am trying to live out in my own life. Um, I don't meet it every day, but it's something that's top of mind, and it's that, um, I try to imagine everyone I meet wearing an invisible sign that says, "Tell me, do I matter? " and that we can all answer that question with eye contact with warmth. We don't even need to use words with strangers to we people are so starved today uh for mattering that we can meet that need and what you will find what I have found is that the fastest way to feel like you matter is to make someone else feel like they do. — Love it. And I think what I heard from you is that it's not buying them their fancy car when they graduate from high school. — It's these little everyday behaviors. — Yeah. It's knowing them. — It's a little board. It's the little note. — It's the greeting. It's the thank you. It's the kind of um just everyday kind of micro behaviors. It is it's the it's the signal that you matter so much to me that you are a priority in my mind. — Love it. Well, this is awesome. — Thanks, Mark. — Thank you so much. Love talking with you as always. — You too. — And um obviously let people know where they can get your book and learn more about everything that you're doing. — Great. So um you can get my book anywhere you buy your books. Um, you can uh find me on Instagram at Jennifer Bhennywallace. You can find me on LinkedIn. Um, you could find me on my website. I have a newsletter uh that goes out once a month, jenniferbwallis. com with a lot of mattering strategies and tips. — Great. Thank you. — Thanks, Mark.