1KHO 691: The Universal Need to Matter | Jennifer Breheny Wallace, Mattering

Oh, it's a beautiful world Ain't nothing on the screen that's ever gonna be this view Oh, it's a beautiful world And I just wanna share with you It's a beautiful world Such a beautiful world Hey friends, thanks for pressing play. I'm so glad you're here. Before we jump in, do me a quick favor that helps more than you think. Follow the show so new episodes land in your feed automatically. On Apple Podcasts or Spotify, just tap the follow button at the top of the show page. On most apps, it's the same idea. Look for follow or the plus sign. That way, you never have to hunt for episodes again. Okay, today's conversation is one I've been excited to share with you. Our guest is New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Wallace, and we're talking about her book, Mattering. The idea that belonging isn't enough. We don't just want a seat at the table. We want to know where value there and that we still have something meaningful to give. This episode is practical and life-giving, especially if you felt invisible, burned out, lonely, or like your attention is getting siphoned into devices instead of real people. And quick reminder, this is the very last week to get the 1000 Hours Outside app on sale for just $24.99 for the year. It's designed to help you close your phone and go live your life, tracking outside time, building momentum, and celebrating all the memories you make along the way. The link for iOS and Android is in the show notes. All right, let's get into it with Jennifer Wallace. If you're a parent, you know how hard it is to find drinks that are actually good for your kids and still taste good enough that they'll drink them. That's why we have been loving hydration. I always read the label before I let my kids have anything and cure checks every box. Their hydration packs for adults are plant-based, have no added sugar, and only 25 calories. I use them in the mornings to jumpstart my water intake or when we're traveling, especially flights, because they just make staying hydrated easier. Lemonade is probably my favorite right now. It's clean, light, and never tastes artificial. And since it hydrates better than water alone, I actually feel the difference. The kids' mixes have been a big shift in our house. My kids used to resist plain water, especially after being outside all day. Now they will happily drink cure. It's formulated with pediatricians, free of artificial flavors and major allergens, and has no added sugars. We use it after sports, long outdoor days, or even when someone's feeling run down. Staying hydrated isn't just about water, you also need electrolytes. That's why my family loves cure. It's clean, tastes great, and my kids love it. You can grab cure on Amazon or find a store near you at curehydration.com. realingredientsrealhydration ready for the whole family. Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside Podcast. My name is Ginny Erzman, the founder of 1000 Hours Outside, and I have just read a phenomenal book about a topic that I've never even considered. It is called Mattering and New York Times' bestselling author Jennifer Wallace is here. Welcome Jennifer. Oh, thank you so much, Ginny. I'm so happy to be here. So you are writing about things that are so current and so needed. And this first book that's a New York Times bestseller is called Never Enough. When achievement culture becomes toxic and what we can do about it, there is an endorsement on the front by Ned Johnson. And I'm a huge Ned Johnson fan. He has been on our show too. He co-wrote The Self-Driven Child. And you have a new book that's coming out and it'll be out by the time this podcast goes live or right before, so you can pre-order. It's called Mattering, The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose. I love that there's a Clementine on the front. This is a book of ideas that I've never considered. And also it is full of ideas, like the coolest idea. I was like, that's a good idea. That's a good idea. I want to try that idea. So can you talk about this concept of mattering as being deeper than something that's belonging? So we've got a lot of loneliness and a lot of struggles with relationship. And so it's like, oh, if I could only find where I belong, but you're like, no, it's actually deeper than that, you need to matter. Yes. So belonging is, for example, the idea of being invited to the table. But mattering is the idea that you are valued at that table. You are adding value at that table. So mattering just simply put is this fundamental need that all of us have to feel valued and to have an opportunity to add value to the world around us. And this need is going unmet today for a variety of reasons that I'm sure we'll go into, including the idea that we have so much input coming into our lives and so much output is being demanded of us, that much of our day could be felt sort of going through life on autopilot. And what I love about mattering is that it wakes you up in the most gentle, fabulous way to notice your relationships, to notice where you are adding value in the world, who is making you feel like you are valued and how you can do that with the people that you care about at home, at work, in your community. So you wrote this book, Never Enough, this is the first one. And you talked about how in your research, so you're talking about never enough is about our culture of achievement and how our culture of achievement is driving a mental health crisis, particularly among adolescents. And so one of the, and I think this is so pertinent, you said in your research, you are looking at what is, what is foundational for kids who thrive. And this is a piece of it, even though nobody's talking about it at all, really. No, it is, I, you know, this idea of mattering has been studied in academia since the 1980s, but Never Enough was the first book to put it into the hands of people who could actually use it. And so as I was researching the book on mattering, I was like, well, you know what, the adults in their lives don't know how to matter either. So let me, let me go back to Never Enough, the kids who were doing well, despite the pressure in our environment today to achieve, to look a certain way to wear a certain, you know, article of clothing to get a certain amount of lunks, likes, etc., etc., all of these sort of superficial extrinsic demands put on our young people, the kids who were doing well felt like they mattered for who they were deep inside away from their achievements. And importantly, they had an opportunity to add value back at home through chores, in school through activities that were adding value to the community and in the wider community. Wow. And this is rather opposite, I think, of what's happening for a lot of childhoods where instead the parent is sort of paving the way they call it the snow plow parent, right, where they're like, I'm going to, I'm going to flatten this so that it's easy for you. But then that backfires because they need to matter and the adults need to matter. And so you say this is one of the most essential, yet overlooked pillars of well-being. So can you talk about the different stages of life? So never enough is going to deal with the adolescents and, you know, having a life, trying to build a life where they feel like they matter. And then there's this adulthood stage of life where there's a couple different things that can happen. Maybe you've become a parent and all of a sudden you feel like you're invisible. Or maybe you retire and all of a sudden you feel like you're invisible. But you said, I thought this was such a deep question. You talk a lot then about coping with life's transitions. Life has a lot of transitions. And that one of the questions you should be asking yourself in a transition is, where and how can I matter next? Yes. So I know. So I wish I had known about mattering when I was going through some painful life transitions of myself. I remember when I was newly married, my husband and I moved from New York City to London. So in New York, I had deep friendships. I had a full-time job that where I was really adding value, deep friendships that made me feel valued. My family around me, we pick up, we moved to London, and all of a sudden I feel invisible. Nobody knows me. No one's depending on me. I'm not adding value to anybody other than my own little two-person family. And so had I known about mattering, had I understood this, I would have been able to put into context this transition. We often personalize these things. And I know for me, I certainly felt lonely and almost embarrassed that as 30 years old, I could feel so lonely. But really what I was experiencing was a collapse of my sense of mattering. And had I known that, I could have built myself back up so much faster. So what I want to tell people, if you are going through a life transition, if you've recently left your job, gotten fired, relocated, retired, become an empty nest or become a new parent, that all of these things bring with them struggle and that you are not alone in the struggle. People have also gone through similar experiences and let that feel freeing to you, that if other people have gone through it and made it out the other side, you can too. So what I wish I had known to do was to look for role models. Who are people who have gone through a similar transition? If you don't know anybody, read a nonfiction book about it, listen to a podcast about it, read articles about it, then harness what I call in the book the power of invitation. That means accepting invitations or issuing invitations to re-invite connection into your life. There was a woman I interviewed who went through a horrible divorce and was feeling very lonely. She wasn't going to the couple dinners anymore like she did when she was married and she was saying that to her therapist and her therapist said, well, then why don't you start hosting dinner parties? Why don't you invite people into your life? So we have agency. We often feel like we have to be fully dependent on other people, our boss or our friends to make us feel like we matter. We have agency to make ourselves matter again. What I like to say is that we are all one decision, one action away from mattering again. It could be as simple as sending a text that says if it wasn't for you, dot, dot, dot, I wouldn't have had the courage to go on that interview. You know, thank you for lending me your courage and believing in me when I couldn't even believe in myself. Or if you don't have someone in your life that you can send that kind of meaningful text to leave your front door, go to the supermarket, go to the drugstore and thank the person who always greets you with a smile and say to them, you know, life has been so hard lately, but your smile is turning my day around. I hope you know what a positive force you are in the world. What you will find is that the fastest way to feel like you matter again is to remind others why they do. That's so helpful and so specific and so practical. You wrote, you have a responsibility to make yourself useful again. So the question that you should be asking yourself in life shifts and you talk about how there are life shifts every 12 to 18 months, people go through a disruptive event every 12 to 18 months. Half of those are out of our control. You lose a loved one, you lose your job. The other half are traditions or transitions of our own choosing, but you have to include the question, how will I protect my mattering during this seismic shift? For the listeners who are aging, which is really all of us, but have you feel like you're aging and you're like, you know, aging further down that timeline? Someone said one of the hardest parts of aging was that no one relied on me anymore. One of the hardest parts of aging is that people stop investing in you. So you have to ask yourself what aspects of my mattering have taken a hit and what can I do about it? You wrote, transitions are more than logical changes. They are emotional fault lines. When we lose the roles, relationships and routines that once reflected our value, it can feel like the ground below us is unsteady. We might start to feel invisible or even unwanted. Good thing, so you know, I've never learned anything about this. One of the other things that can be contributing to transition, especially today, are machines. So can you talk about that piece, machines that are taking over tasks that once gave people identity and purpose? Yes. So I have a quote in the book from Bill Gates, who said that within the next 10 years, humans will not be required for most tasks. That's his prediction. So I want to just back up and say that this human need to feel valued and add value. It goes back to our earliest ancestors. To be valued by the band, to feel valued by the group meant survival and that people were there to protect you, to feel like you're not valuable meant death. So this is wired inside of us. It is, you know, some people when we talk about AI, tech leaders are talking about, oh, well, we can just have, you know, universal basic income. Well, well, you know, people aren't working, then we'll, we'll find a way to make them whole and we'll pay them that. Yes, probably necessary, but not sufficient. We need to see that we add value to the world around us. We need to know we matter. And I will tell you that there are ingredients to feeling like you matter. I put them into a framework called said SAID, just to make it easier for me to remember, which are the four main ingredients, which is feeling significant, feeling appreciated, feeling invested in, and feeling dependent on. So when you are going through these life changes, these are the ingredients that can can really be taking a hit. Right. So your sense of significance is the idea that you are important to the people in your life that are important to you. Yes, we feel that sense of significance when we're toasted at a milestone birthday or at a retirement party. But we crave as humans to matter in the mundane. We want to know that we're important in our everyday lives. And so my mother does a great job of this. The way she makes people in her life feel important is she collects little details about them, things they like. So when my son who's a Washington commanders fan, you know, when they win a game, she will text him and say, congrats on the big win. Or when my daughter is visiting her, she remembers not just that my daughter likes pasta, but the specific pasta she likes, the rigatoni and how she likes it cooked, al dente and the sauce she likes, bolognese. So mattering is feeling like you are important to the people in your life that you are a priority in their lives. And the way we communicate that to people is by remembering small details about them and circling back to them. It's a simple, simple, simple way of making people feel important. Oh, I love that. You even talked about your sister. Your sister does it too. She knows she'll have the ice cream flavor that your son likes. So there's really great ideas. It's like one after the next. We're like, Oh, I could do that. Because one of the things that you talk about, and I just want to read this about the machines and just so people are aware. And the book is called Mattering, The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose by Jennifer Wall. It's a fantastic book. You can also read Never Enough. It's a New York Times bestseller. When machines take over tasks that once gave people identity and purpose, our need to feel valued and to add value will not fade. If anything, it will grow more urgent in shaping the future of work. And this is good if you've got kids that are, you know, hitting those teen years and are starting to decide what do they want to do. In shaping the future of work, the central question can no longer be limited to what will people do? We must also ask, how will people know they matter? Yes, this is important. This is a really big deal. These are the changes that are happening right now. So you kind of bookend the book with clementines. And you got a beautiful cover with the clementine. I just love it. This is really a book about small gestures. It's about remembering the rigatoni noodles. And you remind the reader over and over again, all the way throughout the book with all of these different ideas, that it's just the small things. So can you tell the clementine story that you started the book with? Yes. So I was reporting for Never Enough. And I was going out of town on Metro North. I was at the Harlem train station where the Metro North trains go. And I had a few minutes to spare. So I ducked into a little bodega in the corner. And I overheard a conversation between the bodega owner and a customer. And he said, when I saw these clementines, I remembered how much you loved them. And I knew I had to bring them back in for you again. And I thought, that's it. That's what mattering is. It's in the detail it's the little things that say you are a priority in my mind. You matter to me, I thought of you. And so to me, when I think of clementines, I think of them as such a hopeful fruit, right? They're in season in the dark days of winter. They're juicy. They're hopeful. So now every time I see a clementine, it reminds me of mattering. And I try as often as I can to have clementines on my kitchen table. Because I just, to me, it just feels like abundance. And it's a reminder that there is enough mattering to go around for everyone in this world. So many of us today are feeling this zero sum culture of, you know, somebody else's mattering, someone else feeling significant makes me feel less significant. And I'm here to tell you, it's just not true. There is enough joy and success and achievement to go around for everyone. I love stories like that, Jennifer, because that person, that man who said, oh, I got this clementine and you say it was a sign someone had paid attention and remembered, proof of connection in a world that often feels indifferent, a small gesture that said, you matter, like he has no idea he's in a book. No, he doesn't. And you know what I'm going to do, because I don't live far from the train station. When I get the finished books, I'm going to bring it over to him and I'm going to sign it and tell him how much he matters to me and how he makes everyone that enters that little bodega feel like they matter. Yeah. Yeah. And then now you think about him and you think about this concept every time you see clementines and you try and have clementines, you know, out on your table. So these small things, you say, I was struck and this theme goes throughout the whole book. I was struck by how the smallest moments could say, I see you, you matter and how starved so many of us are to feel that way. When I was a kid, my grandpa had a room where he took apart all sorts of electronics. Seeing all the parts everywhere is so exciting. Today, as a parent trying to raise kids in a world of screens, I think about how exciting hands on learning can be. It can feel exhausting trying to offer something more compelling than a device. That is why KiwiCo has been such a gift. 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Excluding the womb wow. That's OUTSIDE10 for 10% off at womb.com. So you talk about the small gestures of recognition even waving hello. Yes, just an awareness. We again are just going through life on autopilot because so too many demands on us that we don't often take enough time just to smile, just to greet people. I mean, one of the ways that we can really make someone feel like they matter is the way we appreciate them. So we all know, you know, the feeling of appreciation you get when somebody toasts you. But there's a difference between thanking someone and really feeding their mattering. So let me give you a quick example. Let's say you have a colleague who is always so great at getting people together for a happy hour. Instead of thanking your colleague and saying, thank you for always organizing these things, they're great. The way to feed their mattering would be to say, thank you for the time and effort you put into making us a community. It's because of you that we are so close knit. You have really created a kind of family here in the office singlehandedly. I so appreciate that and I'm grateful. So one appreciates the deed. The other appreciates the doer. So when you are going to thank your kids, teachers, or your neighbor for watching your house while you're away, don't say thanks for watching the house. Say thank you for being the kind of neighbor I know I can always trust and rely on. I can't tell you how much that matters to me. How much it means to me to have you in my life. Yeah, the book is filled with the fantastic ideas. These are all great ideas. You're making someone feel like a priority sometimes takes little more than putting a monetary spot, a momentary, maybe a monetary but it says momentary, putting a momentary spotlight on them. It's just small things. Okay, so this book is filled with ideas, all sorts of ideas that you're like, oh, I'd like to try that. I'd like to try that. Can you talk about the idea the Wednesday breakfast with Grandma Peggy. So the Wednesday breakfast club. So I met Grandma Peggy in St. Louis. Someone in St. Louis was telling me about her. So I went to visitor. She started these Wednesday breakfast clubs because her grandson asked her if he could gather some of his friends because she cooked such a great breakfast. And isn't that so sweet? Like it's so sweet. It's so sweet. And like in general, breakfast is kind of easy, you know, but like she must have made such an impression on him that he like makes these breakfast, she makes these breakfasts that are so good. He wants his friends to experience them. Well, and it grew from his little group of I don't know what it was eight to now she's making breakfast 30 to 40 people show up every Wednesday for her breakfasts. And what I realized was it wasn't about the food even though it was delicious. It was that those breakfasts let her let those kids feel seen and known and appreciated. She gave them you know what I call in the book mattering spaces a third space outside their home outside their school where they could feel like they belonged. And some of the power of these breakfasts were this was this idea of attunement that she was so good at tuning in to each one of those young people. She didn't just know their names. She knew who was studying for a test who had just gone through a breakup who needed a little extra attention that morning. And these kids felt this deep connection because of it. And I was thinking how much technology for example, has isolated us that these kids could have stayed in their beds longer and scrolled on their phones. But instead they put their phone in their backpack, and they went out in the cold early morning, you know, weather to go and be a part of these breakfasts. It tech can really create this kind of social inertia where we just don't move. And we think we're being fed by the texts and the comments on our posts. But that's not what gives us a sense of mattering that those can be temporary fix let sort of like mattering snacks. But we need nourishment. We need people who see us and know us and tune into our inner worlds. We need to feel seen and felt. That is how we feel like we matter. And the only way to do that is in person. I love it. The Wednesday breakfast club. And then she does lose her grandson. It was a tragic accident. Tragic. Yeah. Well, she loses her grandson. He gets hit by a car. And the kids that day rush over to her house to be with her. And they were with her every day while she was in the depths of her grief. And they said to her, do you still want to do these? And she said, if you come, I will feed you. And I think the size doubled. That I know. And there's no breakfast where they don't talk about Sam. That's his name. But she says that those breakfast clubs have gotten her through and have made her feel more resilient. She's an extraordinary woman. I got chills. I'm going to read it. The very next day, his closest friends, regulars at the breakfast gathered at Peggy's house. Grandma Peggy to grieve with her. And then every day that first week, they continued to come by to ensure she was doing okay. Gosh, I mean, that's so, there's so many depths of layers there of mattering, you know, to be a teen and to know that you can matter to this grandmother. I mean, there's a lot of underlying layers there. Grandma Peggy says, it was hard on me, but so hard on them too. Losing your best friend at just 15 must be incredibly hard to comprehend. That's the attunement. Now, the day goes by when we don't talk about Sam. In the days and weeks following Sam's funeral, Grandma Peggy's home remained a space where his friends could gather. When the school year resumed, one asked if the breakfast is a breakfast club going to continue. And Grandma Peggy responds, if you come, I'll feed you. And then, like you said, it just gets bigger. Not just Sam's friends show up, but there's so many that come and want to be a part of it. Breakfast. I talked to this woman who in her books, she talked about waffles at 10. And this family, they make waffles for the football team and whoever wanted to come, like Friday night at 10. You got nowhere to go, you can come over and they just get like five gallons of milk and all this waffle batter and you know, it's just these, these small things can make such a big difference. And you have other incredible ideas. I just want to highlight two here, but there's way more. Or I'll highlight a couple more, just so people can get a sense of there's so many ideas in the book. One of them was Flamingo Friday. We're like in a neighborhood, they put the pink flamingos in someone's yard and then that's the place that you gather. One of them was to send a morning text to a widow, especially maybe if it's a new widow, you know, and there's no one there to wake up to, so you just send a morning text. You talked about how you have a traffic BFF when you're having a bed. I mean, even that, can you talk about that one, Jennifer? Because like just letting someone in, you know, yielding, if you're in this positive mind tech can actually like make you feel better. They call it a helper's high. When we help people, we get this like really pleasant neurochemical cocktail released in our brain. So when I'm having a rough day and I'm driving, I will let everyone and frankly, I almost always let everyone go in front of me, not just for them, but because I get to say I made a small little impact. One of the things that I practiced that I started doing out of this book is every night, I'm not great about journaling. I know I should, but I write so much all day long, and I want to also journal. So I have these two question prompt that takes about 30 seconds to do. Where today did I add value and who today made me feel valued? One day I swear to God, I wrote that I gave someone the best spot at Costco. So I had that incredible. I was driving and I spotted this spot and I was inching toward it and it was my spot. And then somebody else turns the corner and they see it and you could just see the sadness in their face. And I motion for them, you take it. And I wrote that down. I added value that day. It's fantastic. What an incredible practice. Where did I add value? Where did I feel value? Because you wrote, you have the responsibility to make yourself useful. Again, when no one depends on us, a sense of purposeful purposefulness probably, I think I have a typo. When no one depends on us, a sense of purposelessness can creep in as counterintuitive as it may seem. Too much freedom without meaningful responsibility can leave us feeling hollow. It's great. What a great practice. I love that. And then it reminds you also that you matter. Okay, let's talk about this as something I hadn't really considered. As a cultural change, our village is now behind a paywall. Yes. Right. The village still exists, but you have to pay to access it. So, you know, one of the things that I think about, we all, I think everyone listening would agree that it takes a village to raise a child. But guess what? We're all social beings. We all crave and need the village throughout our lifespan. So, if we want to be sturdy adults for the kids in our lives, we need to tap into the resilience that relationships give us. So, what I've started doing is being really intentional about rebuilding my village. And it's a practice. This is not a one and done. It's a daily choice to prioritize relationships, to prioritize connections, to prioritize the kind of relationships where we could be vulnerable with, where we could let people in to get to know who we are deep inside, because to be valued is to be known. And for a variety of reasons, people, their relationships feel hollow today. I spoke with hundreds of people who told me that I have friends, but they don't, they're hollow. They're hollow because we haven't given the time or the bandwidth to invest in them. Or we feel like we need to be perfect to be loved. That's a, that's a big lie. I write in the book about the beautiful mess effect, this idea that we overestimate how perfect we need to appear to be worthy of someone's connection and care. When really, it's when we show slices of our messy life and we let people in that the research finds that we are seen as, as warmer and more authentic. I, in my mind, the way I remember the beautiful mess effect is if you've ever tried to put a little sticky on a shiny lacquered wall, it will stay for a little bit, but then it'll kind of slide off. The stickiness is required. We need a little bit of grit. We need something rough to hold the stickiness. It's the same thing with relationships. If you are showing up as these perfect people and none of us are perfect and you're hiding your messy self, I'm telling you, you are not getting the, the deep relationships you deserve. Let yourself be a little bit vulnerable. Invite people into your messy lives to help you clean them up. You wrote about how it's really a gift for everyone. You said, friends are the oxygen in the plane. We need people in our lives who can open up to, who we can open up to, who know us well enough so they can see when we're struggling for air and who will reach over and put the oxygen mask on for us. That's a very different level of support than the one we normal, normalize in our busy self-reliant culture. But I've come to think of it this way. When I don't reach out for help, not only do I deny myself the support I need, I also deny my friend the chance of being a helper and to get the helpers high. You're denying the friend the chance to be the helper, to feel trusted and relied on and to know how much they matter to me. So the next time you hesitate, I hope you remember that asking for help isn't weak. It's actually an act of generosity. That's pretty deep. And this whole paywall thing is interesting because you just pay. You can pay for your Uber, someone's going to take you to the airport. You can pay for the people to come move your stuff. You can pay for the task rabbit, you know, to fix your fallen gutter. So when you're sick, you can, you can get chicken soup delivery. Exactly. That's right. That's right. Yeah, to our detriment, I hadn't really thought about that. Okay, here's another thing. I wasn't expecting at all, mattering spaces. So this is going to include parks for trying to get outside. And in fact, being outside has been a huge part of our mattering where we've built a lot of our relationships. I mean, I wasn't expecting this chapter at all. I never even considered about it. Considered it. Can you talk about what our third space is and why are they important? Right. So researchers have been studying these third places for a while now. So the first place is home. The second place is the office or for a child, it would be school. And then the third space is the place where you're outside of your home or the place where you spend most of your hours, a place where you feel a sense of belonging and connection. And what I argue in that chapter is that we can make everyday spaces into mattering spaces. My dad was so great at doing this. When he retired, he instinctually knew he didn't know about mattering, but he knew he was going to have to protect his sense of mattering. So he started these little routines. One routine was he went to the same casual restaurant every week for a burrito. And he got to know the waitstaff's names and who was going to college and who had kids and how old were the kids and really took an interest in their lives. When my grandmother, his mother-in-law was dying, he stopped going to help my mother care for her. When she passed away, he went back and everybody was like, oh my gosh, we've missed you, Pat, where have you been? He explained the next week, they handed him a sympathy card where each person had written a personal condolence. Oh my gosh, they were saying to him, you were missed, you matter here. That is how we create mattering spaces just by being more intentional about how we move through them. So the cafe, it's appreciating the barista that we see every week. It is striking up small talk with the Bodega owner so that he remembers your clementines. It is these small ways of letting people know they matter. Everyone today is starved for mattering. They're just starved and we can feed it. I am trying this practice in my life. It doesn't work every day, but it is a practice I am working towards and that is to envision everyone I meet, strangers, family, colleagues wearing an invisible sign that says, tell me, do I matter to you? And we can answer that question in the kindness we offer even strangers, a warm smile, eye contact, saying, I see you, you're not invisible. So I think some of the reason why this sense of mattering has eroded, first it's that we've moved away from family and friends. We don't know our neighbors. Many people don't know their neighbors anymore. We used to have things like religion and 4-H clubs and places where people would gather these kind of mattering ecosystems is what I call them. And those have vanished and what's taken the place of religion, and I'm not saying religion has always been perfect, but one of the things religion gave us is the sense that we are loved unconditionally for who we are deep at our core. And we don't have that anymore. We have replaced as a culture, religion with capitalism and who matters in capitalism, the person who is contributing the most to it, making the most money. So very much our sense of mattering our core, fundamental need to feel unconditionally worthy, that is gone. That is absolutely gone. And I will tell you, it is something we need to build back because it is literally killing people. It is literally, I have a study in there where I quote researchers who studied suicidal men, and they found the two words that they were most likely to use to describe their pain was worthless and useless. No one is worthless. No one is useless. We, as human beings, have a responsibility to remind each other that they matter. Wow. And mattering would be the opposite of both of those, both of those words. This third space is phraseology I've never heard of, even though you say it's been studied, libraries, coffee shops, theaters, gyms, the kind of parks, the kind of low profile places where we have informal interaction, these spaces matter for our sense of well being. People who engage in social interactions in third spaces report higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction. We can be the architects of mattering. We can shape our buildings. And afterwards our building shape us. That's a quote by Sir Winston Churchill. And then you say, don't underestimate the power of food. This is good. I mean, if you're listening and you think, okay, I only have two spaces, I only have school and home or work and home. I don't have a third. You can see how that would, that would really help you to feel better because it's going to help you to increase your, your social network. And you talk a lot in the book about social health. You talk about how there is this social health crisis. You say the mental health crisis is only provides a partial picture. So the third space would help that you talk about, I think this is something that most people would think about when you consider like, you talk about small gestures. I really liked the idea of if it weren't for you. You brought that up at the beginning. That was one of my favorite things. I had it bolded. The if it weren't for you text or if it weren't for you note and just wording it that way. It's like, if it weren't for you, I mean, I couldn't get my kid home from school. How many friends do we have like that? Well, you're kind of like, I do desperately need you, but I don't know if it's odd if I say it, you know, but that's such a great, great wording. And to really think about our people, the people that are surrounded, you know, if it weren't for you, who would I text like my mom, like who would I text about like the dumb little things that our kids do that no one else would care about, you know, but then you send it to your mom, you send it to your mother and that whatever, if it weren't for you. But then there is the thought of like, well, what if I go too far with this? And you talk about how for the most part, all of this re energizes us that, you know, we think that we're going to be really burnt out, but you say energy doesn't work that way, helping others boost our own vitality. But then you do also bounce it out. You say sometimes it can go off kilter and the sense of being relied on can start to crush us, we can feel depleted. And what you say is, this isn't true mattering. It's a distorted kind of mattering, one that lacks the critical ingredients of importance. So can you talk about mattering to ourselves? Yes. So this is something that is hard for a lot of caregivers. It certainly was for me, this idea that I have needs, and that my needs don't always have to be last on the list. So I've become so the idea of mattering too much means that you feel dependent on you feel important because you have so many people relying on you, but your needs are never prioritized. So that's not true mattering. So what does it mean to matter to ourself? Here's a practice that I've started doing since researching this book every morning. And it's I'm not saying this easy. It's not it's easy for me now because I've been doing it for months, but in the beginning it's awkward every morning to wake up while you're brushing your teeth and say, what is one thing, one need that I have today that I need to fill so that I can be my best self for the people who rely on me for the people who I care about. It could be for one woman I interviewed, it was a one hour walk every day. She takes it whether it's raining long, it's a long one hour. That's her lunch hour that she takes her colleagues know, her husband knows her kids know. This is how she matters to herself and how she can show up and be her best self. It might be a bubble bath that day, it might be I want to have a cup of coffee in peace for an hour at my kitchen table not answering emails not dealing with somebody else's agenda. So mattering to ourselves is insisting that we are also a priority in our lives. There's a psychologist that I quote this idea of being a selfist. A selfist is not selfish. A selfist is saying, I matter as much as the people around me. And so it is about a true mattering is a balance between mattering to ourselves and mattering to others. And that is something that we need to protect. And another thing that I've done to matter to myself is I've created what I call personal policies. So these are things that I do and don't do that protect my sense of mattering. So one of the things that I don't do is I actually I don't cancel plans on friends unless I'm sick. Wow, wow. Simple. I'm telling you if there's one thing that has enriched my friendships, it's that personal policy. My friends know that unless I am sick, I'm going to be there. So we have this deep sense of trust. And people feel like they can rely on me. So that's a personal policy that protects my energy, because my relationships give me energy. Exactly. Right. Because it's so easy to cancel on friends. It's so easy. You talk about social inertia. It's so easy to just not go. So this is something that enhances your life in so many ways to not cancel. Exactly. And it's simple. I met another woman who recently told me she had a personal policy that she doesn't cancel when it's raining. She said so many people, especially here in New York, it can be a real drag when it rains. There's traffic, you're go, you have to walk several blocks to get to the subway, whatever it is. It's easy to want to cancel. But I am here to tell you do not cancel. Be the friend in your social circle that does not cancel. And I tell you what, on a separate note, it feels good to be out in the rain. You think it's going to not feel good, but it is. It's kind of rejuvenating. And it's just kind of opposite of what you normally do. You wrote, social inertia is real, even among adults, and especially among adults, actually, I think, social inertia, it's hard to leave the house. There is a pole to stay home, to binge watch TV, to doom scroll. And you wrote this, I wonder if you're giving the best of your attention to your devices. What if you saved some of it for people in real life instead? Yes. Tech, I will tell you, tech has made life frictionless. This is a goal of Silicon Valley. Tech should should the experience should be frictionless, they say. Click on a button, get your groceries delivered, click on a button, get your food delivered, click on a button, get your packages like everything in life. We have lost a tolerance for friction in our lives. And it is impacting our relationships, because guess what people are? People create friction. People create friction, they're imperfect. They annoy us sometimes. And so many people are cutting people out of their lives because they're annoying. Well, guess what? It's what it is to be human. Guess what? You're annoying too. We're all a little annoying. So allow for friction in your life, because it's in the friction. Again, I'm talking about healthy relationships. I'm not talking about abusive relationships or relationships that you really should be cutting people out of. I'm talking about every day friendships and relationships that where there's a little bit of friction, it's in the friction and in the repair of that friction, where meaning really comes through. That is where we signal to people that I love you even though you're annoying. I love you even though you are almost always late to meet me for coffee. I still love you. I still see the good in you. So think about if you have lost a tolerance for friction in your life and start rebuilding a little bit of that. You talked about the snow plowing of childhood. We've snowplowed adulthood. We want lives to be smooth. We want things to be easy and we get frustrated. We have a very low frustration tolerance for things not going well anymore. And this I blame on tech. I blame it on tech and I want you to realize that humans create friction and it's in the friction that you can live a meaningful life. I think you'll find this interesting. I read this book where I was talking about how our social relationships, like our body, like our body tells us when we're hungry, our body tells us to when we're thirsty, our body also tells us when we're lonely. And so it was like talking about in terms of kids, like letting them play and then also letting them have downtime. Their body is giving them the cues. And you had written, self-imposed solitude might just be the most important social fact of the 21st century to be aware of. The real problem here is that the nature of America's social crisis is that most Americans don't seem to be reacting to the biological cue to spend more time with other people. Yeah, that's Derek Thompson at The Atlantic. The idea that we, when we do feel lonely or anxious, where we might reach out to somebody for support, instead we numb out on our devices or we binge watch Netflix instead of reaching out to somebody to co-regulate with us. So yeah, I think we are ignoring the cues to connect and it is leaving us lonely. It's making our relationships feel hollow. So listen to those cues. They're there for a biological reason to keep us socially healthy, which is to keep us mentally healthy and faith and physically healthy. Social health equals psychological health and physical health. What an interesting book. It's called Mattering with a little Clementine on the front, The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose. I liked this part, it was a quote by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, because we were talking about like the distorted kind of mattering where you're kind of holding too much. And she says, the child has two parents, please alternate calls. It's his father's turn, like getting the calls home from school. That was like, that is a good limit. You talk about personal policies, I will only field every other call. Right. I love that. That's exactly, yeah, start thinking about what your personal policies are. Yeah, that's a good one. Okay, here's another one. This book has so much in it, so many different concepts. And for me, I had not been exposed to them. And so it's just like all new and really cool things to think about and to consider. One of the things that you talked about, and you gave the example of firefighters, is that it can be a common thing where we don't see the end result of the things that we do. We don't really see our impact. We're disconnected from it. Can you talk about the firefighter example and what that might look like for an everyday person and maybe ways to change that a little bit? So I interviewed a firefighter. I didn't know this, but firefighters are often the first to arrive at the scene of a medical emergency or a car accident to stabilize people and then EMS takes over and brings them to the hospital. And firefighters never know what happened next. Did the people that they save or that they tried to save survive? Did they ever walk again? Do their efforts make a difference? And so I spent time in a fire station in North Charleston, South Carolina, where the fire chief recognized that this was causing burnout and disengagement, even cynicism in his team. And so he created a system to track the outcomes of rescues, so that his firefighters could know when their actions had saved a life or ease someone's suffering. Because he knew that it's not enough to do meaningful and purposeful work. We need to know our work makes a difference. We need to know we matter. This is true for all of us. I am a writer. I spend six, eight hours a day writing alone, wondering, hoping that my words will hit and hearing from you that it resonated, that it changed the way you thought about things, that there are actions you want to take in your life. That is connecting me to my impact. So because life is so fast, we often don't close the loop for people. So we take the piece of advice, but we don't tell our friend how it helped. So one, we can be better about closing the loop for other people. And we could also be better at connecting with our own impact. I interviewed a woman who has what she calls an impact file. So anytime she's a consultant who works from home. So she doesn't get a lot of recognition and appreciation. She doesn't have any colleagues. But when she, one of her clients sends her a thank you note or a thank you text, or her work makes it into a newsletter or into a newspaper article, she'll clip it and almost create like a kind of trophy wall for herself so that she can go back to it. So what I will say to you is, one of the, one of a great way of reconnecting to our impact and reconnecting to our sense of mattering is to create those little files. I now have a file where when I get a thank you note or I get a card or a reader writes me and says how much my book impacted their life, I save them so that on the days that are hard, on the days when I'm tired and is this even worth it, I can go back to that file and say, oh, I am impacting people's lives. It's worth it. You say it's the opposite of a gratitude journal. Right. A gratitude journal is all the things you're grateful for. What you're saving here is the opposite. You're saving all the gratitude being given to you. I think that's good. I mean, I feel somewhat the same way. It's like you record this thing, you send it out through the air. I don't even know. I've always thought about that. I'm like, how are these songs playing on my radio? They're going through the air. What exactly is happening? The technology about it? Then I have had two podcast reviews recently where they said I was repetitive and I can't get over it. You know why you can't get over it? Because we are wired to focus on the negative. We have what researchers call a negativity bias. All of us have that. Here's what I want you to do, is I want you to read all the positive reviews and there are so many of them. That will stick with us. That's an evolutionary reason. It's not a flaw. It's not a bug. It's a feature. It helped prevent us from going into the dangerous cave or eating the poisonous berries. Strong makes a bigger impact on us than good does. That's why we need to override that tendency by keeping an impact file. It's important because it has thrown me for a tizzy. Some woman had written in and was like, this is repetitive. I was like, well, I disagree. But you can't respond. Also, I'm like, that's probably immature. I should probably take that feedback. I do a thing. I repeat words a lot. I'm like, maybe. I don't know. I'm like, well, I read a new book. This is a new person or even if it's a repeated person, they've got a new book. But anyway, so then someone else, Jennifer, edited their old review and was piling on it. I do think we can be... I am pretty disconnected. So what an author. You're pretty disconnected from your results. They're going to give you a number and say, this book sold 35,000 copies in the first week. And you're going to be like, I don't know who are those 35,000 people? So it is... It's something really to take in and to consider. Can I give you one piece of advice that has worked so well for me when it comes to negative feedback? Yeah. So my love language is not words of affirmation, but words of helpful criticism. So here's how I look at it when people... And I invite this kind of feedback is that I see it as people investing in me. I see it as one way you can look at that feedback. And hopefully it was said a little kinder, is that this person really, really has a real interest in my podcast and how kind that she took the time to give me this feedback because she wants to make this even better. She's a part of this community and she wants to make this even better. I'm not saying every piece of criticism should be taken in that way, but I'm saying once that really resonate, take it as investment. In order for us to feel like we matter, we need people in our lives who are invested in us, take that as a form of investment. That's beautiful, Jennifer. And they did say it very nicely. I just... When I repeat it, because in my mind, I was like, Oh, am I not... Everyone thinks I'm boring and repetitive. I can assure you, I don't think you're repetitive or boring. You know, so isn't that funny how your mind just like turned it immediately? Because actually, they both were nice. And, you know, of course, the feedback is always good. I like that. Words of helpful criticism. This book is filled with way more than we even talked about in this conversation. You talk about being a part of a bigger whole. There's so many different ideas in here about little things that you can do that can be so impactful on others. You say, well, most acts of kindness will remain isolated gestures. Even when nothing more comes of them, they are still important. Every act of kindness, no matter how small reflects a choice to see and value another person and creates ripples of goodness that we may never fully understand. You talk about when you experience loss and how that can be so disoriented and how going back to this concept of mattering is something that can help ground you. There's something really sweet that your dad said. When you're fully present, you don't really feel a need to go back. I asked him, we were looking at my kids playing on the lawn and I could see like this wistful expression on his face. And I said, dad, do you sometimes wish that you could go back to our childhoods? And he said, you know, when you're really present, you don't feel the need to go back. It's such a reminder because the childhood can come and go and you could wish for it back, but you can't get it back. So that's really what you want. You want to be fully present. So you don't feel a need to go back so much in this book mattering. And you can also read Never Enough. Ned Johnson on the cover there. I think people loved, they've been on our show a couple times and people just love Ned Johnson and Dr. Will Stixerhead. Never enough is when achievement culture becomes toxic and what can we do about it? Very important for parents, especially in this day and age, you got kids that are getting to those teen tween years. It's going to be really helpful for them as well. Jennifer, we always end our show with the same question. The question is, what is a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside? Every day, I'm getting choked up because my dad passed away this year, thinking back to this memory. Every day of my childhood that I didn't have an after school activity, he and I would play catch on the front lawn. And it's a tradition that I carried through with my own children because when I, you know, it's so funny that sometimes when I can't sleep at night, I will close my eyes and I will play catch with my dad on the lawn. Wow. Wow. Gosh. And that's a full circle moment because this book is about the small gestures and that is such a small gesture. It's not taking your kid to Disney, you know, it's not anything that's expensive. It's not monetary. It's just tossing a ball back and forth. And that, that showed you that you mattered. Yeah. And that was a part of his purpose too. Wow. And you say his death shook me to the core. He was a foundation of your mattering and that would go back to those simple games of catch mattering is reinforced in small moments. It's a beautiful book. I loved reading it. I loved it. I thought I was just so interesting. All these new things that I'd never considered it will definitely change the way that interact with others and interact with myself. Jennifer, thank you so much for being here. You made me cry. I'm sorry. I know this was so good. You are so good at what you do. You bring such energy and fun and joy to it. You are really such a gem. Oh, Jenny, thank you so much. Thanks for spending this time with me today. I hope this conversation meant something to you. If someone popped into your mind, while you were listening, send them this episode. A friend who feels lonely, a parent who's caring too much, a teenager who's drowning in achievement pressure, a sister who's in a big transition, tap share right now and text it over. These episodes grow because someone thought you matter. This is for you. And if you haven't yet, make sure you're following the show so you don't miss what's coming next. On Apple Podcast or Spotify, go to the show page and hit follow or the plus sign. It takes just a few seconds and it really helps. One last note. This is the final week to grab the 1000 Hours Outside app for $24.99 for the entire year. If you want a simple tool that helps your family build rhythm, spend more time outside and keep screens from taking over, it's there for you. Link is in the show notes. I'm so glad you're here. Until next time, may you find extraordinary moments on Ordinary Paths. Oh, it's a beautiful world. And I just want to share with you. It's beautiful. Such a beautiful world. So you want to start a business. You might think you need a team of people and fancy text skills, but you don't. You just need GoDaddy Arrow. I'm Walton Goggins and as an actor, I'm an expert in looking like I know what I'm doing. GoDaddy Arrow uses AI to create everything you need to grow a business. It'll make you a unique logo. It'll create a custom website. 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