Perfectionism, Burnout, and Self-Doubt: Break the Loop with the Science of Mattering | Gordon Flett

27:16And when you find a story in that book of the young child going out with no clothes into the snow to get away from the mom who's expecting a lot, that is not what anybody could see as a good outcome. And it's funny, I'll just say this, to bridge a little to mattering is that the concept I have of antimattering, which we'll explain, but I was reading and found the book, biography about Paul Dirac, who was the person who was the famous Nobel Prize winner who created the concept of antimatter. But he had a horrible father. He had a father that saw him as the protege, so he drilled his son separately in a separate table while the rest of the family ate in the kitchen.

28:02And when he made a mistake in terms of teaching him languages, he would humiliate him so that Dirac, who ended up being a Nobel Prize winner, wouldn't say anything to other people in public. He wouldn't interact. He certainly couldn't be on a podcast because he was so worried about the reaction of he varied and made a mistake in terms of what he was saying. So it got to the point where he was a guy who was brilliant. His father coached him in terms of the academic side, and he ends up doing this, but he ends up winning the Nobel. I think a lot of Sheldon and the Big Bang is based on his personality characteristics.

28:40But at the end of the day, he ends up hating his father and sort of tolerating his mother, so that when he wins the Nobel, he invites his mother and refuses to have his father come, And sadly, his older brother saw the favorite treatment that he was getting, and he ended up taking his own life. And Dirac said that the only time I thought that our parents cared about us was when I saw my dad crying at my brother's funeral. So I'm going, that's a cautionary tale about what cost achievement. And the parent seemingly was oblivious to how the kids were feeling about the interaction style, but eventually it had such significant costs.

29:27And to develop that sense of resentment over not getting the kind of treatment, no sort of affection was shown, certainly by the father. I'm screwing my son up in lots of ways, but it's not that way. I'm sure you're doing a great job on a lot of things, too. I got to be the prophet for the self-reward and kindness. Right, exactly. Thank you for modeling that, yes. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. We talk about mental health more openly these days, but asking for help can still feel hard, and BetterHelp's latest research confirms this. BetterHelp's 2026 State of Stigma report surveyed 2 ,000 Americans and revealed that 85 % of Americans believe getting support is wise, yet 74 % say society discourages people from doing so.

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33:44So let's talk about mattering. We established early on that you kind of made your mark in academia with perfectionism, but over time started to add to get interested in mattering, which you see as a kind of antidote to perfectionism. Let's just start with a basic definition. What do you mean by mattering? This form of mattering is about mattering to other people so that other people care about you, other people are interested in you, other people essentially value you so that they would miss you if you're not around. So essentially, the most extreme example would be somebody treats you as a special kid, the one who, you know, the grandparent who treats you as a special kid.

34:27But people care about you, and clearly you know that you make a difference in their lives, and ideally they do the same in your life. You mentioned the grandchild. I think some of your interest in mattering comes from experiences with your grandmother. Yes. The story I like to tell is that both of my grandmothers worked at the cafeteria that was at the top of the road where my one grandmother and grandfather lived, and we would get to go visit. And my sister and I would get treated like the king and the queen are there. And everything was there except the red carpet. And surrounded by people who knew that we were coming and were also giving us this adulation.

35:06And it can really mess with you because you don't realize at the time that other kids are not that fortunate. So we were very fortunate to have this. And the other grandmother who worked there actually lived with us. So I was sort of raised by our parents, but also our grandmother and grandfather in the house. When you're surrounded by people who show you that kind of care and affection, it's a great start. And, you know, if only everybody had that start to life, because we know that others are not as fortunate. And my mother as well was somebody who was so effective. She only went to grade 8, but she learned the street smarts and the importance of relationships.

35:48And where it comes into play in terms of the mattering as healing, I can remember my childhood sounding idyllic there, idyllic, but it all took a turn when I was home for lunch the day that JFK was assassinated. And the TV was on. So I'm there home having my lunch. I'm six years old, and I'm watching the TV, Walter Conkite, and the news comes that the president has been shot. Ultimately, the president is gone. And I'm thinking, what? How could this be? I just saw him on TV. And how does a six-year-old make any sense of this? So my mother and grandmother were both there, and they kept me home and said, we need to talk about it.

36:30We want to know what you're thinking. And, you know, I was fortunate to be able to have two loving adults who were to help me make some sense out of this. But I sort of filed it away and didn't realize that there was a research element to this in terms of mattering until much later on down the road. You had a light bulb moment about mattering after a near-death experience? Yeah, that was one of the times I had a light bulb. I can just say that I feel sometimes you study something that you're meant to study. in this case, the initial work on mattering was very sparse, and I sent off for a book as a graduate student that had this piece in there, and I go, what is this concept?

37:09And I go, oh, and Rosenberg, the famous theorist, is saying that this might be the most important part of the self-concept, especially for adolescents in terms of their sense of worth. So I just filed that away. But later on, I had my own health experiences, and I actually had a bout of sepsis. I'd actually turned totally jauntless beyond yellow to be actual orange, like pumpkin orange. And my own Dr. House at the time, I used that example, figured out what the problem was. But at the time, I said, you know, at the end of the day, my wife told me while I was hooked up to all these transfusions and wires in the hospital, she phones me while I'm lying there saying, well, some good news if you actually ever come out of there.

37:54and by this time I lost 30 pounds and it wasn't looking good. She said that the university just phoned to say that you're going to be awarded the research chair on personality and health. And I said, well, hopefully I get a chance to do this. It's something that's a great opportunity in terms of the resources. But I said, when I get around to it, one of the things I've got to study is that connection to people. And when you're lying there thinking this could be it, you're thinking about the people in your life, if not anything else. And it doesn't matter how many papers, publications, books, these are the people that you're thinking about.

38:32And I think I read somewhere or heard that you've done some work in a hospice situation. And I'm sure you've seen when it gets down to the tough times for people that they want the people around them and hope that somebody will be there to take care of them and show them that they matter. And so can you draw a line specifically between perfectionism and mattering and how the latter helps with the former? Yes. One of the things that's become apparent and I think surprised some of the people in the perfectionism field is that a lot of what's driving perfectionism is the unmet interpersonal needs for love, acceptance, belonging, and a need to matter.

39:14perfectionism is almost like a coping mechanism, a way to try and get those unfulfilled interpersonal needs met. So it's the idea of, well, if I am perfect or if I do better than others, I'm going to get the recognition, the significance, the love from other people. And unfortunately, what happens in the case of this is that extreme incidents where there's a very rigid set of circumstances is where that love and acceptance is not available. It's never enough. Perfectionists believe that if I'm perfect, then the interpersonal needs will be met or at least more approximated, but find out in the meantime that actually it's a recipe for the stress getting to you and more loneliness, and it's not the answer that they're looking for.

40:01And sometimes perfectionists go, well, I was actually perfect this one time. I wasn't getting what I need interpersonally, though, so maybe I need to push the bar up even higher, because when I go even higher, that's how you can really get into an upward spiral that's very self-defeating in the long run. So there's now about six papers overall that have shown the link between perfectionism and the feeling of not mattering. And some of these are a form of not mattering that's an extreme, I don't matter to anyone. So it becomes very generalized when it's a more painful expression. And then people are kind of caught because they're going, well, even if I'm being a bit successful, I'm still not getting the interpersonal side of what I need addressed.

40:49So then what do I do? Because I've already exhausted myself through trying to be perfect. That's the negative side. That's the connection between not feeling that you matter and and subsequently becoming a perfectionist. How is it that generating a sense of mattering can solve your perfectionistic impulses? Well, and that would be the case where the need is being satisfied, and people are saying, I could see where people could say to themselves, well, maybe I don't need to be perfect in order to get the kind of attention and the respect and the significance so that, you know, that obviously was a misguided thing, and I've learned that I'm getting satisfied here now, so I don't need to be perfect anymore.

41:34And that is something that is hopeful in terms of you thinking, well, what can we do to try and help the perfectionists in our life? And if they get a true sense that they truly do matter to people, some people lose sight of how much they matter and come up with a mistaken view that they don't matter when they actually do matter. That might be the sort of thing that at least gets them to say, well, maybe I don't need to be perfect all the time, or I don't need to be perfect in this. I can pick and choose and be a little more selective and a little less judgmental of myself and others because I'm now getting the rewards in life and learning as well that it's not just about achievement.

42:13It's about your people in your life. Right. Just to put a fine point on that, if you've been laboring under the delusion that perfectionism is what is required for you to feel lovable or to get love. If in fact, you can just shift your focus for a moment to the, to the fact that there are people, if you're lucky enough to have them in your life who love you, no matter what, um, uh, specifically for who you are, uh, flaws and all, if you can take that in, it can illuminate the absurdity and the self-defeating nature of perfection. Yeah, and that's the key you said was, if you can take it in, can you take it in?

42:57Are you capable of this? And one theorist who talked about perfectionism and procrastination and not mattering said that unfortunately some people have had a life of maybe neglect, for instance, and they're not really capable of feeling the sense of mattering at the start. They have to learn to be able to take in the feeling and then apply it to things like their need to be perfect. So, you know, that will require a lot of work on the front end to be able to say, you know, look, you do matter, how come you don't feel it, and get people to get to a point where they have worked on that relationship with the self and are able to now take it in.

43:37Because so many people reject it, and they think, well, people are just trying to humor me, people are just trying to stop me from having my pity party, but I'm going to have the pity party anyway. And, you know, that is driven a lot by the feeling of something else involved with perfectionism, which is a deep-seated feeling of being an imposter, where you're not as actually feeling as good about yourself as other people seem to be treating you. So we are going to get, as we always do on this show, we are relentlessly practical. We're going to get to some, and you have lots of ideas and strategies for how we can generate a sense of problem.

44:15This sense of not mattering can come from a rough childhood, but can also come from just being part of a community that is devalued by the larger society. Yes, yes, yeah. Yeah, that's the truth of it. And let me just say for your listeners, first of all, that I distinguish between three different types. The mattering is the positive feeling of being valued by others. Anti-mattering is the flip side of that, where you're feeling that you're invisible or insignificant, you're mistreated in a way that makes you feel unvalued or devalued. And then more recently, we've been studying what we call the fear of not mattering, which has all kinds of implications these days in terms of worries about your future as relates to workplace AI decisions where you might be made to feel irrelevant and phased out.

45:08As great as mattering is in terms of that feeling and knowing that you're valued by others, there's the flip side. And the anti-mattering concept, in part I thought of it because I was looking at work by Nancy Schlossberg on mattering versus marginalization. And we know that it's veridical that many people are put into marginalized situations where they're looked down on, they're ostracized, they're treated a certain way. This is something that's a reality for some people, And what I say in those instances is that's when you need to, through the people who are close to you, develop a positive sense of mattering to them because it will help you with the challenges and the adversities that you experience through that marginalization and being treated that way.

45:52And, you know, I also realize that when people's lives are stretched, I can think of a single parent, for instance, with many kids, you know, I can say, well, you know, you could go do something like volunteer, which is a way to build a sense of mattering. And this is what I tell parents of perfectionistic kids who are worried about their kids. They say, what can we do here? Because it's not us putting pressure on this kid. Sometimes it's the peers. Sometimes it's just wanting to achieve, to overcompensate for feelings of inferiority. And I said, well, you can volunteer and show that you are getting a sense of value as a family with the time together so that a sense of worth can come through contributing to others rather than single achievement focus.

46:37But I realized that this is kind of blue sky thinking for somebody who's got a life situation where they're just trying to get by on a day-to-day basis and may not have the opportunity to go volunteer or do the sort of things that they ideally would like to do. I think that anybody exposed veridically to some kind of ism, whether it's racism, sexism, ageism, their felt experience of that could be this feeling of anti-mattering. And what I like to try and urge people to do there is to not play the game of internalizing that message that other people or society is sending to you. it really is true that everybody counts and everybody matters.

47:18I always think of Harry Bosch, the famous fictional detective, you know, everybody counts or nobody counts. Everybody has something to bring to the table. But people internalize that message and don't have others in their lives who give them the more positive, mattering message that can help pull them out of it. And I know about the ageism, you know, through skin issues went went white much earlier than you would have through regular aging process. And when my research chair was up for renewal the second time, I was trying to balance my own research and overseeing 200 researchers at our university.

47:54And then the word came through our dean that he'd heard from the head of research that I wasn't going to be renewed for my research chair. And the head of research at the university bluntly said, well, he's too old. You know, I said, I experienced this once, and my approach with these things is the chip on the shoulder, I'll show you sort of approach. But I said, how would it be if you had a life filled with these kind of messages where, you know, it's coming at you from all sides and all people, and you didn't have an opportunity that I had to be able to do the I'll show you. So it's no wonder that the stress and the distress stress that's sort of built into veridical anti-mattering can really wreak havoc in terms of people's lives and feelings about themselves.

48:37And what Rosenberg said, and is a very original work, is that we also have to realize that everybody has a need to matter, and when people aren't getting that need to matter, some people will turn to antisocial means of expression as a way of sort of saying, you didn't think that I mattered? Well, now maybe you'll think twice because of some of these heinous things that people end up doing. And that's been called the search for significance theory of pretty antisocial behavior. Because everybody, one of the points I want to underscore is that everybody has this basic need to matter. I believe it's tied right into our survival because I think it's tied into the intention and interest that we get as infants that get us fed and taken care of.

49:19And I see this because I now have four grandchildren, three and under. and I see the interactions and I can't turn off the psychology part of me to say, well, no wonder we need attention, we need to be needed, we need interest of others, because it's through getting that interest and attention that we end up getting fed and taken care of early in life before we can even speak. And I think that that makes it so rewarding when we have that sense of attention and interest from others because it's been tied to addressing basic needs, but at the same time, so disquieting and so against our nature when we're getting treated in a way that we're not getting attention or we're actually getting devalued and unregarded by others.

50:01And there I go back to the famous book of Ralph Allison, Invisible Man, and it's filled with examples of being treated in a way that you're invisible and you don't matter. And Allison said in one interview and one preface to a later edition, he said, it's not just a case of being invisible, you get to be looked at in a society where nobody's even seeing you and even considering you. So you're invisible, which is a, you know, a next level. We don't have time to get into this in a deep way, but, but, you know, one of the things that you, you have argued, and I think this is really amply borne out by history, um, that, that, and you referenced it earlier, anti-mattering can have very dangerous consequences.

50:43And I think humiliation is an underappreciated force in human affairs. We see it on the level of geopolitics when nations feel humiliated. The Weimar Republic, that's just one great example that leaps to mind, but school shooters for sure. And I've just seen it play out in my own life that some of the greatest cruelty that I've experienced is at the hands of people who I humiliated in some way or that I made feel like they didn't matter. And yeah, so this is a dangerous force that we're playing with here. Brown and Harris did a famous study on the origins of depression and life stress in women back in the 70s and 80s.

51:25And the number one factor that came through in terms of the most troubling event was being humiliated, where you're feeling that you've been treated as less than and everybody knows it. And it's understandable if it actually did happen that way to have some kind of a strong response to it. So let's get practical in terms of how we can boost our mattering quotient personally. I think the first question is, how can one self-assess? How can I figure out whether I have enough mattering in my life? Usually people who don't have enough mattering in their life have come to figure it out where they're jealous of others or they're wondering why.

52:03One of the cues for feeling that you don't matter is loneliness. Loneliness is so strongly correlated with the feeling of not mattering that we talked about it as the double jeopardy of not only feeling alone and isolated, but feeling insignificant and irrelevant. So I think when people are lonely, they start to think, well, I guess I just don't matter as much as other people, or I don't matter enough for somebody to call when I thought they should, or whatever. But people are often incorrect about the self-assessment. And this is a key point I want to underscore for your listeners is that people are often wrong about this.

52:39And Rosenberg talked about this back in 1981, because he said that, you know, it's a very subjective appraisal. Do I matter to others? And it turns out that about three out of 10 people have a feeling of not mattering to others, but within there are some who actually do matter to others, but they don't realize it. A lot of people undersell themselves that they don't realize they matter when they do. So we need to realize that people, we matter more to people than we often know. And this is why I say that whatever we talk about in terms of making sure that people have a sense of matter, we need to know that people know for certain that they matter.

53:17The subjective element is really, really problematic. One study done with a school board I worked with, we found this overall that about 30 % of the students said they didn't feel like they mattered or they weren't sure when parents were asked is it possible your child has a sense of not mattering only eight percent said man maybe my kid feels like he or she doesn't matter so about one out of five of the students were walking around feeling like they don't matter when their parents thought that they actually did believe that they mattered so when i tell this to a group of parents i get horrified looks because now they're thinking oh no am i one of these parents i thought my kid was okay and my advice to those parents is you want to make sure you don't feel worried anymore.

54:01Show them that they matter. And don't stop when they hit the adolescence period where they say, you know, talk to the hand, I'm too cool to show that I need anything from a parent. Because they still want to know that you care, they still want to know that you're interested in them, and you're looking out for them, but they just won't admit it necessarily because that's just not on according to the age group. So I say to parents and anyone, really, if you're not sure about whether somebody knows, show them that you care through the various means that can drive that message home. And don't stop showing it until they say they've had enough, because people will find a way through their insecurities and self-doubts to convince themselves they don't matter when in fact they do matter.

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57:03this gets us to practical tips for boosting your own sense of mattering one of the ways to boost your own sense of mattering is to help other people feel like they matter yeah that's a critical thing there's an extensive like so being a mentor being a coach being a volunteer there's a reason why some people take it too far in terms of the service of others because they get that sense of reward and validation in the moment. Indeed, when I became undergraduate director for the students, as I mentioned earlier, and the predecessor, who was somebody I was close to, said to me, why should you do this?

57:40Because others have said no. Why would you want to take on this role? He goes, unlike writing a paper or something, you are going to find students that you are able to help in a way that will change their lives, and you will be able to go home that night knowing that you made a difference, and nobody's going to be able to mess with that and to take it away. So, just a sense of otherness, but it doesn't have to involve going and doing things like volunteering or mentoring or coaching. It can just be how you learn to relate to other people, where you check in on them. I know you've had people talking about interaction styles, about the importance of deep and responsive listening, which is a key in terms of getting that reciprocity of mattering to each other.

58:23One thing I say there is it's not just about deeply listening to someone, but it's also asking, just thinking about what might be important to them. We're showing an interest in something that they're doing, so asking them through that about what's going on with them, just checking in unexpectedly. We're not too far away from the school where our daughters were fortunate to go to, and there was an amazing principal there. Peggy Morrison was the master of the personal note, which we don't get a lot of these days. But if you write a letter or a note to somebody, especially now when it's something that people don't do a lot of, they know that you've taken the time to think about them, and then you can express how you feel and how much you appreciate them.

59:03A big element of mattering to others is showing that they are appreciated and showing them that you are really appreciating not only what they have done, but you also appreciate who they are as a person. And to show you the impact that that can have on someone, just before the pandemic, I was giving a public lecture at our university, nobody knowing what was coming in a couple of months. and it was filled to capacity, not because of me, it was filled to capacity because of mattering and the deep resonance it has with everybody to the point for the first time ever, they had to get another lecture hall and fill it up and send me there remotely so that the people who were showing up with no seats left for them had a place where they could hear what was going on.

59:48I'm giving my public lecture and when I'm talking about facets of mattering, I said Nancy Schlossberg introduced the concept of appreciation, that we know we matter when we feel appreciated, and we know we don't matter when we are doing something that seems to be not appreciated. And she talked about how the only time that anybody has ever said they matter too much are caregivers who feel that they know they're appreciated, but it's got past the point of reason and affecting them. So I said to people, knowing this, I said, one thing I want to say about appreciation, I know because we were going through it a bit.

1:00:26I said, if you're somebody in the audience who's in a caregiving situation where you've been giving yourself to other people, which is what we talk about in terms of giving value to others, I said, I want you to know how appreciated it is by me and by other people, including the other people who don't do it, but are so glad that you're doing it. So I said this, and then I started to go on, and then I could hear in the front row, it sounded like somebody was crying. And I looked up, and sure enough, there was a lady in the front row, about middle age, and she had tears streaming down her face, and she was trying not to audibly sob.

1:00:59And it's quite a visual distraction when you're giving a talk and you go, great, now something's happened. So at the end of it, though, eventually she got under control and she came up to me and she said, I need to apologize to you. And I said, no, you don't. I said, you're human. That's whatever it was. I said, but I hope you're okay now. And she goes, well, I want you to know that when you said that appreciation for caregivers was such an important thing. She goes, I have dedicated myself to other people as a caregiver. This is the first time that anybody's ever told me that I'm appreciated.

1:01:31And I couldn't, she didn't realize I was carrying around this need to hear somebody say it, to say somebody said that what I was doing was needed and that people cared about and recognized what I was doing. And I said, how sad this is that nobody along the way would tell somebody that they're appreciated. People who need to hear this and include first-line responders as well. We recently had a medical incident in our house where I had to phone 911 back in the fall, right around when our Blue Jays were losing the World Series, but we came close. And I phoned, and paramedics, fire personnel immediately came, then the paramedics came.

1:02:10It turned out to be okay in the long run. But everybody that left that night, I want them to know that I really appreciate it. And I said, what a relief it was when you were so desperately needing somebody like this to see that truck roll up, whether it's a fire truck or it's an ambulance. And so I thanked each and every one of them. And unfortunately, the person I didn't get to thank was the amazing person answering the call, the 911 call. And I mentioned this because we're doing some research on these people and police officers, as well as those people who answer the 911 calls, there's a subset of them who convince themselves that what they're doing doesn't matter.

1:02:47And our work shows that about one out of four are saying, you know what, I'm doing this, but I don't really matter. And I'm thinking, this has to be somebody who nobody's ever sat down and said, you're so appreciated in terms of what you've been doing because they're judging themselves, maybe according to the self-criticism and lack of self-compassion that we've talked about already, Dan. But, you know, people need to know that they're appreciated. So just letting them know they're appreciated, they don't have to do anything spectacular, but just acknowledging it will yield amazing benefits. because one of the things that consistently comes up when I read accounts of not mattering and burnout across different jobs is the sense of what I'm doing is not appreciated.

1:03:31Another way in the work setting to give people a sense of mattering is to really give them a sense of voice where you're seriously letting people have weighing in on opinions and decisions that need to be made because people need to feel that whatever is happening in whatever setting is co-created and they have a voice that's being recognized and acknowledged and even heeded when there's change that needs to occur. And again, engaging in these behaviors of helping other people know they matter boomerangs back on you because inculcates a sense of significance for you. However, as you said, there are some people who go so far in the caregiving direction that they feel unappreciated.

1:04:09And for them, would you say that one of the potential remedies would be to speak up and say, I need some recognition here, or I need a thank you? Get together with other caregivers who are there to say, hey, we know what you're going through, and we appreciate you because we know that that's what we've needed along the way. I've given talks for the Alzheimer's Society here in Ontario on caregiving stress and how even when somebody, a family member, is really in deep state of cognitive difficulty, You still need to see a glimmer or some kind of thank you, or the staff needs to be able to weigh in and express what they understand about what people are going through as family members.

1:04:57I think there's just a general message here is it's important to be aware of people's need to matter and just look for opportunities to let others know that you care about them and you acknowledge and appreciate what they've been doing. And then the real key is for those people who aren't able to internalize. At the end of the day, you need to be able to matter to yourself. And that's where I would think where most of the coaching is for those people who are on the path to burnout. Maybe they're perfectionists who are just giving themselves up and not leaving enough for themselves and giving everything to others in a very imbalanced, unbalanced way.

1:05:36And, you know, I once gave a talk recently where I said, let's complete these stems, these sentence stems. I know I matter to myself when, you know, because people need to make this as a mindful component of their day, I think, when we talk about mindfulness, which is correlated with mattering, by the way. But they need to be mindful about mattering, and especially in terms of being mindful about their own need to matter and protect themselves and take care of themselves. I absolutely get, and I think it seems completely obvious and doable that life is filled with opportunities to be kind to other people, which can then make them feel like they matter, which in turn makes you feel like you matter.

1:06:18But the idea of specifically going at generating a sense of mattering to yourself, how would you coach people to develop that? It's not easy because people are so focused on other people or, as I said, the perfectionists just keep pushing themselves. What I tell people is they have to essentially have a sit-down with themselves and look at, am I getting where I need to be? Am I feeling the way I should be feeling about life? And if not, it's because they're not mattering to others, but also they're engaging in self-defeating tendencies. Anything that might be pushing things to the limit is something that needs to have some self-analysis.

1:06:59But as you say, it's not easy to do. I tell people, you know, just some basic habits you need to get into. No to when it's time to try to get some sleep as opposed to just keep pushing and pushing and pushing. No to not look at screens when you're going to bed at night. And maybe also, though, rearranging your time so that you're having more of the relationship focus that you need, where you'll get that sense of, I need to matter to myself because this person cares about me, so why don't I care about myself more. I'm really concerned about evidence that is out there about the shrinking friendship circles, especially among younger people where we're not engaged in this.

1:07:40I was just talking, I went to see the optometrist before we had this session today, and he was talking about how people just don't have the conversations that we had growing up where friends are sitting under a tree growing up and they're talking in person, or you just phone somebody and you hear their voice rather than just relying on a text message all the time. Some of it is, I think you can pick up on it through realizing that people care about you and then, well, I can now infer that I should care about myself. This is what the sociologists and social psychologists said about what we call these reflected appraisals that, oh, we see how people are reacting to us, we need to start internalizing that in terms of the sense of mattering to other people, to oneself as well.

1:08:25but it's not easy because people tend to just keep pushing themselves and many people are selfless to the point of you know putting themselves in jeopardy and it's okay I think I can remember that might have been Salye who talked about an altruistic altruistic egotism where you're altruistic but you realize that you should be getting some benefit out of it as well and when the point is reached that you are not feeling the benefits you need to scale back on that or find something else that will give you that sense of benefit. This has been such a fascinating conversation about the scourge of perfectionism and the positive influence of mattering and how to tap into it.

1:09:05Is there something you were hoping that we would get to that we haven't gotten to? Yeah, just one thing I would say. I mentioned in passing the fear of not mattering, and I think that this is something as a society we need to start focusing on these days. It's very easy when you're feeling that the world is dictating to you how things are going to be to feel very small. And now with AI in particular, you can have that fear of not mattering because you feel that they're coming for you and your job. Or alternatively, the fear of not mattering that I would experience, for instance, because I retired at the start of last year, and you're thinking, okay, well, now are you still going to have a chance to talk about things like this with Dan and others.

1:09:51So, it's important to balance the focus on anti-mattering with that fear of not mattering and how we can learn to not let that fear overwhelm us as well. But I think that this is something that people should talk about openly with other people, because you'll find that everybody has a need to matter. And if you say something as simple as, you know, I'm worried that AI is coming from my job. How are you feeling about this in terms of your job, that gives people a sense of similarities and unites them and something they can talk about because ultimately the best relationships are the ones where people let down their guard and are willing to share what's going on internally with them in terms of the thoughts, feelings, fears, and so on.

1:10:31And this fear of not mattering we have found is particularly driving the link between the mattering construct and social media addiction. And this is one thing I encourage people they want to do more reading about is that mattering and the not mattering and these fears have a role to play in virtually all the big ticket problems that we've been talking about. I listened to your session with Dr. Murthy, the two-parter, and loneliness and the fear of not mattering are closely related. So, this is why we need to proactively find ways to boost that sense of mattering and that sense of connection and put down the devices because it's just feeding into that unmet need to matter.

1:11:12You're finding ways to satisfy it that are very surface, rather than engaging in the deep conversations and interpersonal one-to-one relationships that people really need and crave. Amen. If people want to learn more about you or from you, how can they do so? I'm on Twitter slash X, and if people need to contact me, It's easy to find. It's email gflat at yorku.ca. And I can say that there are some public lectures that are on YouTube that they wanted to just hear more about mattering, but not also me. There's other scholars, one that recently passed, the late, great Isaac Prilatensky. He introduced the concept of mattering as having value to others and giving value to others in terms of the volunteering and the like.

1:12:01and there's a lot of material out there for people. I purposely, whenever I can, publish an academic paper and try to write it in language for real people. I was the only one, by the way, in my family that went to university and I laugh when they say, well, you're gonna don't use the academic terms. That would have lasted two seconds with my mother at home. But there's a lot of papers that are called open access that are out there for people to read that they can find out much more about mattering. You just do a search on me and mattering and many of these papers will pop up and then there'll be other people's papers as well.

1:12:34Gordon Flett, this has been a fantastic conversation. Super helpful, super interesting. Really appreciate your time. Thank you. I greatly enjoyed it and hope you'll get a chance somewhere down the road to do it again. Thank you so much to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. 10 % Happier is produced by Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

1:13:06Also, one last thing before I let you go. Our Summer Sunday Live series is officially underway every Sunday at 4 Eastern. You can join the legendary meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg for a deep dive into the Buddha's cookbook for happiness, The Eightfold Path. You can catch up on replays if you've already missed a few of the sessions. and you can join the next live meditation and Q &A only on the 10 % with Dan Harris app. Go to danharris.com to start your free trial.