Dr. Gordon Flett on the Urgent Need to Know You Matter | EP 597

28:46but it could also be acting out and doing things where you're not worrying about consequences because you don't see a future. And mattering to yourself wraps around that concept of hope and optimism in terms of what you're for yourself in terms of the future. And if you don't matter to yourself, then you just act whichever which way because you're not seeing anything that you're going to lose down the road. Psychologists, I'm not a clinical psychologist. My closest colleague in the perfectionism work, Paul Hugh, We've been working together for 30, 35 years now. And he talks about the relationship that the self has with the self, that you've got to be kind to yourself.

29:23You've got to care about yourself and not be so hard on yourself as perfectionists tend to be because they feel that they're pushing themselves by being so hard on themselves. But ultimately it's a recipe for exhaustion and being totally drained. You've got to learn to be accepting of oneself or your setup for all those bad choices. So as I was discussing this concept with my wife, we were talking about events like Easter, which is coming up, or Christmas, Hanukkah, where to me, I always feel the most emotionally involved in the holidays when I'm giving a gift to someone else, much more than when I'm receiving a gift from someone.

30:09It wouldn't be the same if I didn't intentionally go out and select that gift for them, wondering how they're going to react to it, wanting to see their anticipation, et cetera. So when you think about that, what are the psychological benefits that come specifically from giving mattering to others, not just receiving it? yeah I have to say here that when you said to giving a gift I immediately my mind went to being at the bottom of our stairs here waiting for our daughters to come down the stairs to see caught him sneaking down there early a couple of times along the way too but just the looks on people's faces and how that makes you feel to realize that you've had that impact where people think wow that's somebody who's really thinking about me and I did find that as a big shift for me as you get older that but you do get that sense of having a positive impact so it reflects back on you in terms of you can make a difference in other people's lives and that special glow which I learned back when I was the undergraduate director because this person I inherited the role from said unlike most things where you send a paper off to a journal and be waiting months and wondering is anybody going to read this when I actually have it out there if it goes out there.

31:27When you're the undergraduate director, you have students with real problems, real lives right there. You can do something about it. And he says, you'll get that glow of knowing that, hey, I actually am making a difference around here, that this student's life is going to be better. This person got back on track. And it does develop a sense of what we interpersonal efficacy, where you feel you can have a positive impact on others. And some people, I think, have taken what they've learned through mattering to others in terms of relationships, And then they've gone on to careers in terms of public service.

31:58And anybody who's in a public service will know about what it means in terms of wanting to make a difference in people's lives and how you feel like you do make a difference in people's lives. And when they're prone to burnout is when they get to that point of saying, I don't matter. Nobody's paying attention to this. If I didn't show up for work, nobody would miss me. And that's one of the key elements that's not been studied extensively, but there's clear links between feelings of not mattering and psychological burnout and demoralization in the workplace. To the point that the US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Dr.

32:33Murthy, included that as one of his five pillars in terms of workplace mental health, the feeling of mattering in the workplace. So I think of that, though, in terms of, I think back to the pandemic and here's those situations where we celebrated first-line people, front-line people, and celebrations at night, ringing bells and that. And then later I've seen accounts of going, hey, where did all the appreciation go? Because suddenly it's not taking on that spotlight. But you get that sense of making a difference in people's lives. And the key part, which Nancy Sloshberg talked about, a key element of the mattering concept is the feeling of being appreciated.

33:14Once you know that you're appreciated, it's like a sense of validation that's not going to be creating narcissism or false feelings about the self that, hey, somebody sees that I made a difference. And when I'm asked to give advice for perfectionistic kids and their parents, parents say, well, what can we do? I said, how about you spend some time volunteering where your child learns that it's not all about grades and competition, but you can actually feel really good about yourself in a lasting way by going out and doing something for other people and you don't forget it. And also when you're in an occupation where you feel you should be getting some acknowledgement and appreciation and instead maybe you get criticism or no attention, it can cut you both ways in terms of that as well.

34:02For sure. So we've talked a little bit about anti-mattering and you gave the definition of mattering. So how would a listener know if they might be experiencing anti-mattering? Are there certain psychological or emotional signs that someone might be feeling? Yeah. I won't go into this in great detail. In terms of the scale, it talks about things like, to what extent do you feel insignificant? To what extent do you feel invisible? But I think one of the things that's correlated with anti-mattering that probably might amplify feelings of it is when people feel really isolated and lonely. There's a very strong correlation.

34:48I just have a recent chapter on loneliness and the feelings of not mattering. And the premise of the chapter is the loneliness epidemic actually an epidemic of feelings of not mattering because they're so highly correlated. And even when I look at the items to measure loneliness per se, I see all these anti-mattering type items that are in there. That's sort of cool for those two to be related. So it's a sense, though, of really feeling like if you weren't around, nobody would miss you. And there's different levels of it so that, you know, you can have a moderate level. But if you have an extreme level, which sadly some people do, I've seen perfect scores on our measure that are so alarming.

35:32This is where you'd say, I don't matter to anyone. And people seem to be going out of the way to make me feel insignificant, or they look through and past me. People in homelessness situations, they feel like people are just looking beyond them and they're not really there. But some people have lives like that. And it's also possible to have a general feeling of mattering because we've shown in profiles that people have a sense of positive mattering, but they also have a sense of anti-mattering because maybe they have a background where they know they matter to people, but they're in a work context where they're made to feel irrelevant.

36:05And that famous thing about essential workers versus non-essential workers. I'd say, just as a quick snapshot, if you feel like you're not just a non-essential worker, you're a non-essential person. Now, everybody's essential. Everybody matters. And you have the potential to make a difference in people's lives. But if you're walking around feeling like that, you've probably got this sense of anti-mattering. And the other thing that we've been studying lately as an extension of that is the fear of not mattering. So that you feel like you matter now, but you anticipate maybe you won't matter down the road.

36:39So it could be in my context, for example, okay, I'm facing retirement. Am I still going to have attention paid to me? Do I have to stop people on the street now and start rambling? I'm a madman. And that fear of not mattering, I think, makes people just keep striving if they're perfectionists because they don't want that feared outcome to occur. And I came up with the idea of actually studying this when I was watching the Emma Stone, Michael Keaton exchange and Birdman movie, where she very harshly says, Dad, you know what your biggest problem is? You're afraid that you don't matter. And then she says, and you know why?

37:15Because you don't matter. So she got him on the anti-mattering and the fear of not mattering. And this is not as prevalent a feeling, but it certainly is relevant to certain age periods in one's life or transitions. And the whole side of mattering that's not been studied with exception of maybe four studies is the loss of mattering where you were somebody who felt significant and then something happened where you now feel insignificant. And then you can dread the dreaded anticipation of something like that happening, which tends to tap into other insecurities. Well, when you think about what you've just described, there are various points in your life where that could happen.

37:59One could be you're coming out of a long term relationship or a marriage. Yeah. Could be one aspect of it. Another one that I typically see people who come to me who have had a long career and now they're either retiring, maybe from the military, maybe from what they're wanting to do. And their whole sense of identity is shaken to its core and they don't feel like anything they're doing matters. I've seen this happen. It happened to me when you get well into your career, only realizing that what you're doing is not what lights you up inside and never was. And you're searching for your identity again.

38:43So I think there are many different circumstances that in our lives that we hit peaks and valleys where we feel like we matter and other times troughs where we've lost it completely. Yeah. And the feeling transition in terms of the feeling really gets at people. In my case, I spent three and a half years as associate dean in our faculty of health. And I remember the feeling, okay, you're literally a big man on campus. And then the next day when it's all over, you're not. that's okay now I'm back into the rank civilian life as one of my colleagues described it but it really hit home when I said that parking spot that I had right by our building am I going to be allowed to keep that no you're not allowed to keep that and and then I said how about like can I go on the waiting list no it's too long so it's like status one day not status the next but we could be doing a great service to people if we start to put ourselves in the shoes of all these individuals and think what kind of things can we set up so that they can retain a sense of significance where they can make a difference in other people's lives so that it's not what they were doing but they still have something where they can see a valued role because it's far some people simply just can't handle it and I think there's even in retirement there's the stories of people who don't last very long after they've got the coveted retirement because they just don't feel a sense of being valued and anymore it's too much of a transition for them but we don't tend to do this.

40:13We don't try to, there's a lot of things going on in the world. So we don't think of what opportunities we create for people as they are making these transitions that can be incredibly difficult for them. Absolutely. Gordon, I wanted to go into a couple different areas. One of them is going to start with workplace, and then we're going to go to schools after it. So I want to start with the early experiences that you had visiting your grandmother's workplace because they had a significant impact on you. And I wanted you to use the experiences of visiting her workplace to how the workplace has evolved today.

40:50Right, right. I can answer the first part of that easier. But my paternal grandmother and my other grandmother worked at a cafeteria that my one grandmother ran. So my sister, and I'm talking maybe six years old, five years old, and my sister is a year younger, We would go to visit the grandmothers and get a special lunch and have all this attention, plus whatever we wanted, which for me was usually some mac and cheese and some chocolate milk. But I'm concerned about this in general. We know that mattering is associated with workplace satisfaction, and I've talked about the mental health. But the anti-mattering also occurs at work.

41:31And I think we've lost the sense of what it means to be a person who's experiencing job transition. So when people who have been in a valued role for years suddenly get an email that tells them, sorry, but your performance isn't up to speed and pick up your stuff and you're gone. And I do know that there are people now working on an anti-mattering work version to show that this sense of being unimportant and insignificant in the workplace is also very potent above and beyond general feelings of mattering or not mattering. And what I would tell leaders is that you need to focus on the human costs.

42:08Effective, impressive leaders already have figured this out. So it's part of their leadership orientation where they feel that everybody counts, everybody matters and that everybody has a role to play versus the type of person who might go to the favorite, the prestige employees and not give others a chance to have input into decisions or a sense of voice. And, you know, workplace mattering is something that has got very limited attention. There's a separate scale, the measures mattering in the workplace that's only been used in a handful of studies, but it's absolutely critical. And that's something that I saw in our local school in terms of the educators all feeling like they mattered and everybody feeling like they mattered.

42:53And it is tied into that sense of demoralization and burnout that I was referring to. and people like Freud said, love and work are the two key domains. Well, if you feel that your work is something that's draining you in terms of you're not getting any sort of validation or sense of being valued in that workplace, it's going to be reflected in illness, turnover, absenteeism, presentism, where you're there, but you're not really there psychologically. Bottom line is that when people in a work setting or another setting feel like they matter, they're much more engaged in a day-to-day way and in a problem-solving proactive mode versus being disengaged and disillusioned and demoralized if you feel like you don't matter in a work setting.

43:41And the leaders who have already figured this out, they've gotten where they got for a reason because they are realizing the human side of everything. Yeah. When I talk about this, I talk about my experience when I was at Lowe's Home Improvement. I had this friend of mine named Steve who was over all the distribution components of the company. So when you think about this, this is about 30 ,000 employees. So it's a big job. And we would go into these distribution centers themselves that are They're about a million and a half square foot. So there are these huge facilities. And at the time we had a number of them.

44:20And I remember we would walk into these facilities and they had hundreds of employees and Steve would walk around and he would know every, not only every person's name, he would understand who their family members were, what their passion for. It was amazing. And he was almost like a rock star. People just flocked to him because he made them feel seen. And then I had this boss who was hired. And I remember for the first two weeks that she was there at the new job, she'd come into work, go into her office, lock the door. And the only time she would come out would be if she had a meeting or needed to go to the bathroom or something like that.

45:06And I remember when I finally got a chance to talk to her, I had major components of her job before. So I knew all the employees who were literally just sitting right outside her office, thousands of them. And I went up to her and I said, would you like me to take you around so I can introduce you to the directors and managers and other people who are part of the group? And she goes, you don't understand. And she goes, that's your job. I don't have any desire at all to meet them. My job is to manage you, to manage my peers and to manage the relationships with my superiors. And I just look at this, two people were at the exact same level.

45:49They were both SVPs. And I look at how differently they approach their jobs and how the people underneath them performed for each of those people because one treated them like they were family. The other treated them like they were a cog in a system. Yeah. And people are very attuned to that. And it could be even worse if they treated a few people like they were key and the rest of it, they weren't. I'll tell you a quick story about this. My brother decided to get involved in photography, my youngest brother, and he happened to be at a photo shoot with President Bill Clinton there in Hamilton, Ontario.

46:27And Bill Clinton is somebody who figured this out a long time ago in terms of his charisma. A lot of his charisma is making everybody feel like you're the only person I'm talking to in this room and being sincere about it. It has to be authentic too. It has to really matter. So at the end of this photo shoot, when my brother's in the corner and he's, oh, there's Bill Clinton in Secret Service. And he's just the assistant to the photographer who's doing the main shoot. President Clinton went over to my brother when he didn't have to, when he was already probably behind schedule and said, young man, tell me a bit about you.

46:57You've been here. I want to find out what's happening with you. And he spent time with him, which the glow that my brother had would have probably lasted the next couple of years because of that. The same thing with, there's a big element of mattering in sports and performance. And the really successful coaches are not just the strategists and the taskmasters, but also the ones who make their players feel like they matter as people. And I got a read on this when I went through the book that was written by Jerry Kramer, who became Hall of Fame lineman from the Green Bay Packers, who talked about Vince Lombardi behind the scenes and the diary that he kept for a year.

47:34It's great reading for anybody into sports. And he talks about how Lombardi humiliated him because he was the blindside tackle. And he once as a rookie missed the block and Bart Starr, the famous quarterback, almost got massacred by the blindside hit. And Lombardi showed the tape 32 times or something like this in the film session the next Monday with Kramer right at the front feeling totally humiliated. And he's thinking, I'm going to get my pink slip. I'm going to get cut from this team. So he's sitting there actually thinking, should I clear up my locker as everybody's left? And suddenly an arm comes around him and it's Vince Lombardi.

48:14and he's saying, I was pretty rough on you. I want to tell you why. He goes, I was rough on you because I know you have greatness in you. And I want to make sure that never happens again, because you're going to develop and you're going to, and that was like, he realized what he was doing. It was not just being heartless. He had a goal in mind. And with those kinds of coaches, you might hate them one moment, but you'll go through a wall for them or a frozen tundra field on your way to the first Super Bowl wins. And the coaches who don't figure this out are the ones who don't last very long. That they've got to connect.

48:49And Ted Lasso, of course, fictional example is the example of this. There's a famous clip where he talks about mattering. It's got millions of views online. And at the end of the day, everybody in a role needs to know that the person in charge cares about them. Even just a little bit goes an incredible long way where you make sure to say hi and make eye contact rather than just ghosting by. And people realize that people are very busy. So if you give them a little bit of time, that they realize, hey, I'm important enough, they gave me some of their valuable time. But so many leaders don't figure it out.

49:24And I talk about human costs, but if somebody added up the financial cost, people not being as productive as they could or being ill, it pays for itself. But I think it mostly pays in terms of the people themselves in terms of how they feel as a result of their interactions. And I feel sorry for that lady who's like, she cut herself off from rewarding interactions and more enjoyable workday by not getting, talking to some of the people and probably also not learning some of the things that would then enable her to make important decisions down the road. I won't pick on her too much though. I don't even know.

50:01No, I think that's one of the things that many leaders fail to do is to treat people regardless of where they are in the organization at an equal level, because some of the most mind-blowing discoveries I made was by talking to all the employees, because sometimes they have the best ideas possible to fix things, but they're never given the chance to have a voice into strategy and ways to overhaul things. So you're doing yourself a huge disservice by not including people in the discussion. Yeah, and I always think of my favorite fictional detective Bosch with Michael Connolly. Everybody counts or nobody counts.

50:45And everybody in an organization is important because they're going to be in an opportunity to do whatever or whoever. And as you say, sometimes the greatest ideas come from having many minds focused on the same thing and many voices talking about it. So I now want to switch the topic to kids. So as I have been writing my own book on this and trying to figure out what is going on and who is suffering the most when mattering is lost, what I keep finding is this is what has already happened to Generation Z, and it's what is already occurring to Gen Alpha right now as we speak. And there seems to be a couple different dimensions of it.

51:32You talked about the school that your kids or grandkids were in earlier as a great example of a school where mattering is present. But I feel in the vast majority of schools, mattering is completely absent or severely lacking. And then on top of that, as the work of Jennifer Wallace showed, you then have this erosion of the family system as well, where the person who shows a child that they matter the most is the parent. And if the parent themselves don't feel like they matter, it starts having this ripple effect. So they're not feeling it at school. They're not feeling it at home. They're probably not feeling it from their friends.

52:15And so you've got this recipe where this is something that's now being taught from their earliest ages. Am I thinking about this in the right way? Yes, for sure. Well, you think about everything in the right way, as far as I'm concerned, because that sense of looking at all those domains is critical. And I found there are schools and there are even some school boards here who are now trying to put a focus on mattering, but it's the exception rather than the rule. And for those kids who don't feel like they matter at home and they don't matter in the community, if they matter at school, then they can no longer say I don't matter anywhere.

52:50And they can get out of that type of thinking. And one of the concerns, of course, with the generation that we're dealing with now is social media addiction. And if you feel like you don't have that sense of mattering in your day to day, whether it's at school, family relationships, then you can turn to the Internet and social media to try and get that sense of mattering. And there is some initial research, including studies I've been involved with linking the feeling of not mattering and the unmet need to matter with social media addiction. And that sets you up, I think, for maybe more contact with people, but not the kind of quality relationships that provide that key, unique sense of self-worth.

53:30my thing about schools is that it would be very easy for schools to implement something that would enhance the sense of mattering of everyone at the school if there's no focus on it and it doesn't take a lot of time or energy I did come across one school in our resilience project that was supposed to be in a comparison group and I looked at the scores and the students in the school had much better adjustment and much bigger sense of mattering. So I asked the school board educators, I said, what's up with this school? Because this shouldn't even be a control school. Whatever they're doing, people need to do more of it.

54:08And they said that, well, on Mondays, the school-wide theme is mental health Mondays. And Fridays, it's physical Fridays for the physical well-being. So that sort of initiative where it's coming from the top of the school and then comes in various ways as part of how the week unfolds, sends the message right at the start that, hey, we realize that you need to matter and you matter to us to the point where we've structured this and made it a focus and try to show how you let your fellow students know that they matter so you can develop more peer relationships. But I do think that the mental health issues of young people today, whether it's anxiety, depression, loneliness, suicidality, mattering and that feeling of not mattering has a very strong role to play.

54:57It's not the only thing, of course, but for many, it's at the core element of this. And when they feel that they don't matter, then there's little reason to become engaged in learning. So this is what I was telling our educators is that the ultimate goal for them was to increase learning outcomes and to decrease problem behavior that was really problematic in several schools. And I said, people need that sense of a future and a sense of worth. And that will carry over in terms of learning. And it will carry over in terms of behavior so that people are going to benefit, young people benefit in multiple ways.

55:36And it can create a culture. So if you can foster an environment where it's across, whether it's a workplace or a school or wherever, where that is a very salient thing and people do big things are small things to promote the sense of mattering among the people they interact with. It can have an enormous benefit. And I've seen it. So I actually found with the school behind us and the principal who we renewed acquaintances with on Friday that I found the initial documents where they went and selected staff that had this kind of orientation, who had a people orientation so that it was a brand new school at the time and it was something that was built in, baked in, in terms of picking people you could carry this message and this way of interacting with people.

56:18A following question to that is, I think whether it's kids or adults, many people struggle to see how their actions actually affect others. Do you have any insights from your research on why recognizing our impact on others is so crucial to feeling like you matter? don't have any research per se, except to turn back to that work on doing for others in terms of volunteering or mentoring and how there's a literature on this. Now, usually these papers on volunteering or mentoring don't mention mattering as key ingredients in terms of those interactions, but they say, well, there's a benefit to this and benefit to that.

56:59And what is it about that? And it's in terms of that relational side of things where you can see somebody's face light up when they learn something that they weren't able to learn that transformation because you were able to tutor them in a way that got them on the right track where they suddenly are not self-doubting anymore. But generally speaking, like I said, I do believe there's even examples in terms of that making a difference in other people's lives. There's case examples of people with severe forms of mental illness, and then they were given a role within a setting or helping a fellow patient or that where they suddenly realized, hey, hey, I can do something worthwhile for somebody else.

57:38And I do have this positive and it transforms them. And it's a key to their wellbeing. Just one example of this, how people can lose sight of this though. For years, I don't go to church often, but my wife did. And the church where we were married and the minister who actually married us ended up suffering from severe depression. He was a fabulous guy. And he knew I studied perfectionism and he had perfectionism inclinations. So he asked after two months off due to depression and the whole congregation knew that he was depressed. He asked if I could drop by the manse, the house where they live, and just talk to him.

58:14And on my way there, I got the feeling, this is before I was really studying mattering to the degree that I do now, I said, somewhere along the way, I think he's lost the sense of just how much he means to other people. So as part of our three-hour conversation, I said, I need to remind you what you mean to people, you know, to us, to our kids, to the broader congregation. My wife, when she had a health incident that was almost potentially fatal, he came to the hospital and made sure that she was doing okay. So I don't know if that was it, but I suspect that it was because within 10 days, he was back at work and doing much, much better.

58:55And I said, but it also taught me a lesson though, like how can people who do so much for others lose sight of that? This is where people judge themselves according to some very difficult standards and lack of self-accepting. And I've actually been to a few things that are sad in a sense, but where somebody far too young has passed away and you get there and there's three or 400 people and you're going, did this person realize just how much they meant to all of these people. I had a grad student who passed away tragically around the age of 40. And when we got to the funeral, there was 500 people there because what I learned was, although he procrastinated on his own work, he was a master tutor in terms of statistics.

59:36And he literally went around the university helping out any grad student he could find for undergrad who was having problems with statistics. And it's too bad that people don't realize this. It's like Jimmy Stewart, and It's a Wonderful Life. He didn't realize his impact until he was shown what it would be like if he wasn't around anymore. And I think people need to get reminders. So this is what I tell parents is just don't assume that your kid knows that he or she matters. Show them, remind them, talk about it, and realize that you matter as part of it as well, because parents also lose sight of how much they matter, especially when you feel like it's a thankless role at times.

1:00:16But parents. One piece of advice I give is for that situation where the teenager looks like they don't want any input from the parent, give it a try anyway. And then you can say, well, directly, you can say, hey, I just want you to know, even though you don't seem to want to talk to me, that I'm interested in finding out what's going on with you. Because they will remember that. They may not acknowledge it, but they'll know that somebody actually cared about them when the parent was trying to show an interest. Thank you for sharing that, Gordon. And there A couple of last areas I wanted to go into with you.

1:00:47One of them is the fact that mattering is malleable, that we can actively increase our sense of significance. And I was hoping you might give some practical strategies or maybe habits any of the listeners could do to enhance their own sense of mattering. Well, we can't forget as well the mattering to yourself part of it. People remind themselves of what they have done if they don't feel that way in the current situation with what they've done in the past. But I think the outreach to other people can be through small ways. Just checking in on somebody is one way to get their sense of mattering up, and then you will feel that you matter as well in terms of the reaction.

1:01:28The principal I referred to at the school was the master of the lost art of writing somebody a personal note. But you can also write a note to yourself in terms of reminding yourself about things that you've done that people seem to have appreciated and things that you could do if you're not having a chance at the current time. Really a key thing though is spending time with people. My one brother said one time, he never went beyond high school, but he said to me one of the wisest things I've ever heard, he says, your time is limited. So if you give your time to somebody, that's the most precious gift of all.

1:02:04So spending time with someone shows that you want to be with them, that you're valuing them in a way. And unfortunately, in the busy world that we have too many situations where people are left to themselves and they don't get that interaction. But even just saying to somebody, I've been thinking of you means that, hey, of all the things that are there to distract you and all the social media, that you were the person on their mind, not to the point of stalking or something like that. But on the flip side, of course, is the antimatter. You want to make sure that you're not doing the things that will make people feel less than, to feel devalued or unvalued.

1:02:38So for instance, try not to spend time looking at your cell phone when you're interacting with somebody. Try to have some eye-to-eye contact and put the phone away. That's called phubbing, P-H-U-B-B-I-N-G, in case people thought I said something differently. and don't add to that sense of, hey, they don't see me. They're not really paying attention. They're not listening to me because that can be just as destructive as all of the positive things that I've said. And the work by the Gottmans on marital interactions showed that if you had a very difficult something with a partner, like somebody harshly criticized you, it's gonna take about seven or so positive exchanges to make up for that one negative exchange.

1:03:20So in addition to doing the positive things, make sure to try and limit the negative that will be destructive and give that sense of fears and feelings of not mattering. So it can go both ways. And another one I wanted to make sure I got in here is if our society as a whole, given all the issues of dehumanization, conflict, everything else that we have going on, prioritize mattering more explicitly, what changes do you envision we would see in our communities, workplaces, and our overall mental health? Yeah, massive changes. The potential is there in terms of, especially we talk about the divisions that are amongst people right now.

1:04:02What I tell people is people have more in common than they don't. And something that ties someone together is that everybody has that shared need to matter. And that's important to realize that even when people have fallen by the wayside or done things that are horrible. Even people think about it this way, if somebody's engaged in criminality at some level, they still have a need to matter too. And unfortunately, they didn't have people in their lives who positively exchanged with them in a way that satisfied that need. So maybe I can matter by joining this gang who gives me the attention. So the search for significance through maladaptive, inappropriate ways.

1:04:38But if we dedicated ourselves to this in organizations and in communities, it could transform everything. And we've got a federal election just starting here in Canada. And the ad that's running with our short-term prime minister, Mark Carney, talks about, we care about people. Just that sense of people knowing that people generally do care and it's authentic can go a long way. But when we have situations where maybe every second young person says, I don't matter in my community, we can say, what can we do in the community to make a difference? And I'll just very quickly tell you a story. I know we're going long here, but we once went to Maine to a town called, I think, Macias, and it has the most famous blueberry pie in the United States.

1:05:22And my wife said, hold off till you get across the border because you're going to get some of the blueberry pie. And unbelievably, the night before we went to this inn where there's the restaurant with the award-winning pie that won a national award, the restaurant burned to the ground. Oh, my God. And I said, oh, my God, there goes the pie. But these young people who just took over the place, they've lost their place. Where does Mattering in the community come in? They told us when we got there that the town was very now concerned about all the students who had summer jobs at that place. So the town was getting together the following Tuesday to say, what jobs can we come up with?

1:06:01What opportunities can we come up with? if we can help these young people who now have lost their employment as a result of this burning down, I said, I would want to live in that community. Who wouldn't want to live in that community where people are looking out for each other and deciding that, hey, we'll look past what race, whatever, sexual orientation, and realize that everybody has this core sense of need to matter, and we can do a better job at making everyone realize that they do indeed matter. Yeah, we had something similar to that happen to us about six months ago. We got impacted by Hurricane Helene and had about three feet of water in our house.

1:06:38And we had a dozen or more friends who ended up showing up for us, some pulling up carpet and helping us get the water out of the house and others bringing food and others packing up things for us. And I'll tell you, it's when people show up like they did that you feel that sense of mattering in the most profound way? When you need it the most, and that's a key thing about reciprocity, I should have said, is that it involves a responsiveness to someone's needs. When they send out a signal where you can figure out that they need something, whether it's the help of neighbors or whatever, responding to that is a key time because then they say, hey, this person has tuned into me and what I need and was sensitive that I needed it.

1:07:26On the other hand, if the signal's there, that signal's up and you don't respond, that also then adds that sense of, hey, I'm alone here. I don't have that sense of connection. That's the key is the responsiveness when somebody clearly needs it. Great neighbors, you want to stay there as long as you can. Gordon, you've been studying mattering now for decades. What has surprised you most or challenged your assumptions about how people build mattering in their lives? I think it's when people don't realize that they matter, as we were talking about earlier, but also just how I like to change that around a little and say that people who've told me, like Jennifer Wallace, for instance, have told me that knowing about this concept has changed how they interact with people.

1:08:14The research really hasn't picked up on that yet in terms of how people have had their lives changed as a result of being attuned now more to the relational side of things as opposed to the achievement. One thing that I learned, and this goes back and praise to my colleague Paul Hewitt and our work on perfectionism over the years, is that he said all along in therapy that perfectionists are driven by unmet interpersonal needs. And the achievements driving that's excessive that will end up maybe creating major health problems for them is driven by unmet needs. So indeed, one of the unmet needs is the need to matter.

1:08:48And we need to get a better appreciation of how achievement and interpersonal are actually connected through the needs that are largely interpersonal. And there's now five or six studies showing that perfectionists of different age levels are ones that feel unmet need to matter. And it's like the striving is, okay, if I do something spectacular, if I'm famous, then people will give me the love, respect, attention, and the sense of being cared about that I've been lacking all this time. Yeah. And unfortunately they'll reach that point and realize lie they've been told is going to hit them in the face.

1:09:24Yes. Yeah. The worst people off are the ones who actually attain perfection and find out that it didn't really matter to certain people that they really cared about. Yeah. And I just had a really good conversation with Lori Santos about this. She was put into this position, like the one you were describing, where she got picked to live on campus in this big house. And she was in the middle of all the students, became the den mom at the time, and realized just how many of them were suffering from perfectionism, from overachievement, from feeling less than. And that's why she created the whole course that became Yale's most attended course in history off the back of mattering really or seeing the phenomenon of anti-mattering feeling like an imposter feeling unseen and not wanting to share anything about themselves and a lot of the other thing that i've talked about in this new book on kids is that the front that people put on where they let on that everything's okay and this is especially the case when people feel like they don't matter because there's a sense of shame about it.

1:10:36Maybe it's something about me as the reason why I don't matter. That's the sort of time to talk to oneself that people have to stop doing. No, it could just be you're in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people, or you haven't had a chance. You need an opportunity to show that you matter. But I learned very early on with students and was a champion of student mental health that they may look like they're doing okay, and they're exceptionally talented and all kinds of potential, but dealing with things. And that's where I came up with the idea of individualization, that you talk about students, but students are different.

1:11:06Each has their own unique history, unique set of experiences. And what might be how somebody got that way is totally different for someone else. And taking the time to hear somebody's story and to be responsive is one of that keys of building that sense of individual connection with somebody and realize that things are much more complicated than they seem on the surface at times. Absolutely. Gordon, can you just for the listeners. You had a previous book, The Psychology of Mattering. Can you talk about that just to tell them more about it and then maybe just introduce this new book that's coming out?

1:11:40I appreciate it. The Psychology of Mattering book was in 2018, and it was the first full-scale book on this particular topic. I think I have it behind me. This is it here. And you notice the hands that came up brilliant, I thought, within the book cover. And this talked about mattering in terms of introducing it, but also mattering in terms of its link with mental health. You can feel like you don't matter because you're not getting the services that you need when you're seeking help, but also mattering at school, mattering in the workplace and so on. And the new book, this one here, just published by the American Psychological Association.

1:12:15This is the full-scale look at what is it like to be a kid growing up in today's world without a sense of mattering. There's a top 10 list, for instance, of 10 indicators of kids feeling like they don't matter. Also, I talk about links with depression, anxiety, social media, physical violence issues as well. So full scale look. And one of the key points that I could say about both books is that 10 years ago, there wouldn't be enough to write these books. I struggled at first with the first book published in 2018, just to pull everything together because the literature wasn't as voluminous as it is now.

1:12:53Now there's plenty enough and books on the way. And I've been asked to write a follow-up volume to the first book, edition two, plus one on perhaps on the workplace. But what I'm pleased to see is that it's something that is a topic that resonates with the public. So it's not something that sits on a shelf and doesn't get put into action. And there's big ways and little ways that it can be injected into settings and organizations to really make people's lives much better. Gordon, thank you so much for sharing that. And thank you so much for joining us today. It was such an honor to have you. Well, thanks John.

1:13:30And maybe we can have a follow up sometime as I know you're invested in mattering. And I also would like more chance to learn from you because I'm sure you would love that some stories like the ones that you've shared that I find when like-minded people with passion, if you want to say passion struck, get together. and one person will say something and create a light bulb going off and the other person and then even some shared initiatives. So thank you. Absolutely. And that's a wrap. What an incredible conversation with Dr. Gordon Flett. His groundbreaking insights into the psychology of mattering have illuminated a profound truth.

1:14:06Feeling significant isn't merely a nice to have. It's essential for our wellbeing, resilience and overall happiness. His research reminds us that mattering goes far deeper than simply belonging or being connected. It's about feeling valued, knowing we're needed, and believing that our lives genuinely make a difference. From uncovering the hidden cost of unmattering, like anxiety, depression, and loneliness, to providing actionable strategies we can use every day, Dr. Flett has shown us a clear path toward living lives of greater purpose and intention. As we close today's episode, I invite you to reflect on a few key takeaways.

1:14:42How can you actively communicate to others in your life that they truly matter? What practical steps can you take to enhance your own sense of significance, especially in areas where you often feel overlooked or undervalued? And how might embracing the reciprocal nature of mattering deepen your relationships and foster genuine connection? If today's discussion resonated with you, please take a moment to leave a five-star rating and review. It's one of the best ways to support PassionStruck and helps these transformative insights reach even more people. And if someone in your life could benefit from Dr.

1:15:14Flett's powerful research and perspective, please share this episode with them because one conversation can ignite lasting change. For all the resources and links discussed today, including more of Dr. Flett's research on mattering, visit the show notes at passionstruck.com. And if you want to dive deeper, don't miss the video version of this conversation on our YouTube channel titled John R. Miles. And finally, if you'd like to bring these life-changing insights directly to your team, organization, or event, visit johnrmiles.com slash speaking to learn how we can work together to spark intentional transformation and inspire meaningful growth.

1:15:48Coming up next, I'm joined by Isabel and Laura Hoff. We go into their groundbreaking new book, Secrets of the Ice Woman, and we discuss the power of cold and breathwork to balance hormones, bolster health, and unlock inner potential. When my mother died, it was one of the most dramatic, impactful moments in our lives as a family and also my father, because it really made him want to go out into the world and just do things, right? Act to almost soothe this hurt that he was feeling. It was a way for him to escape, but then it became a way of healing. but it was also the reason that he went into these extremes like sitting in a bucket for two hours who does that well a person maybe that is super driven it made my father driven to the point that he went into these extremes doing marathon bare feet climbing a mountain even the mount everest up until the death zone 7800 meters in shorts this practice that my father used to heal himself later on we also we love to practice for different reasons we see it as one of the best modalities to regulate yourself to really come to a center point of yourself where you can go through life in a balanced way it healed him but then he brought it out into the world he has a purity of heart of mind of being that is my thought that's a childlike purity and he gave it to anybody who was willing to listen, anybody who needed it.

1:17:30And remember, the fee for the show is simple. If you found value today, share this episode with someone who needs to hear it. Most importantly, take what you've learned and put it into action. Because knowledge alone doesn't create change, action does. Until next time, live life passion struck.