Why You Feel Like You Don’t Matter (And How to Fix It) | Angela Maiers - EP 752

28:41When I was growing up, my father is from Detroit and I have a large family ecosystem in Detroit. But unfortunately for him, his father, who I never got a chance to meet because he unfortunately passed away before I was born, was just brutal. He was a very angry alcoholic, which is a dangerous combination. Which is a very dangerous, sorry, John. And my father was the first born, so he took the brunt of it. So as soon as he could escape, we became the nuclear family. But I was always so jealous in many ways, because we would go home to the Detroit area for Thanksgiving or Michigan football games or whatever.

29:26And they had this incredible family ecosystem where you would see all your cousins and aunts and uncles who were getting together almost every weekend in these big family units. And I remember going to Christmas there and there were like 80, 90 people and they all knew each other and they all. And I really missed that experience as a child. And I think what you're saying about the small town is that difference between the nuclear family and having that larger ecosystem around you. If you look culturally, I do a lot of work. I've been working in Hawaii for about 30 years in really rural communities.

30:08Everything that is the opposite direction from all of what people think Hawaii is, all the tourist stuff. And that is one of the hallmarks at both the school level, the community level, the family level. Like you can go through a park and you're not talking about like a family picnic for us was going to this park and everybody bring a covered dish. Their family picnics are you've got blow up toys and bouncy houses and they are there for the weekend. You've got tents. It is an event. And I go by that. I'm like, it just reminds me of kids don't grow up with that experience anymore. They may play with one or two kids and I get that balance of safety.

30:49But there's something so beautiful to see, like not 20 or 30, 60 people that are friends and family together. And that's a every weekend kind of thing. It's not, oh, it's this 4th of July and all the families get together. That's every weekend. It's community is so embedded in the culture of Hawaii. So I do think you see that in different cultures and spaces. I think you see less and less of it in the United States. When I look at that scenario and that family, everything has changed now because my grandmother and her sisters, et cetera, were the trigger point that I think the group organized around them because there were so many of them.

31:36And now that they've passed, a lot of the cousins who were my age have all drifted. So they're now living in Chicago or Petoskey. So they're no longer there. So it leads me to this question. When you see communities start to disintegrate or these small towns or family ecosystems, do you think the loss of mattering is usually gradual or is it triggered by specific experiences? That's such a tough question. I think if mattering is so individual, it is, even though it is our universal human condition, it is so fundamental to and inseparable from every aspect of our life. And yet it's very personal.

32:22I'm working with a community. We're doing a project in Appalachia called You Matter Appalachia. And what I'm seeing there is a phenomenon of what is the impact when an entire community, not just a group within the community or an individual within the community or a grade level or a certain group that is what we would deem at risk or at promise. it's what if your brand as a community is you don't matter and that's been proven to you over and that goes into a lot of Gordon's work with anti-mattering and when humans get to that point what gets a human being to that point and then I look at people who grew up in the same household I've been very vocal about this but I lost my brother to suicide at the pinnacle of his career at the pinnacle of his life in a loving family, surrounded by people who cared about him.

33:21Like stunning, just stunning. So it is as individual as it is, there isn't an answer. I don't have an answer to that. But not noticing and not knowing, that's a hard part. I go back to then the quickest, I think you said something about anecdote, but that's what I feel like mattering is. It is both the promise and the peril that we have this antidote that can, I don't think just ease, but can literally eradicate all the things that we struggle with from apathy to agony and everything in between. And it's free and it costs nothing and anybody can do it at any time. And when I say that out loud, and I even say to the people I say it to, I know I sound like a snake oil salesman.

34:12If I said, you know what, here's this pill and it's going to cost you$100 ,000 a month to buy. And it's so rare. And you've got to do all this training and it's going to take 17 years to even see. People would be buying it by the billions. I think that's like the cruelty about this science. Like the pain, if I look at what my deepest pain point is, knowing that this anecdote is available and it's freely available to anyone at any time. If they understood the elements of mattering and the urgency that humans need to know they matter. And yet no one knows it exists. No one seems like in many states cares that much.

34:58It just sounds like gobbledygook. that's painful. My personal hypothesis on this is I compare it a lot to burnout, which is something I unfortunately went through. And I don't think any person goes from not being burned out to being burned out overnight. What ends up happening is it's a series of micro events that eventually cause it to happen so much so that while it's happening, you don't really realize it's like low state depression before it becomes serious depression. You realize your world is getting a little less bright, but it's not such a huge change that you perceive it. And I think mattering is the same way.

35:45And so when people - I fully agree with that. I do. It happens slowly and then all of a sudden you wake up. I think that's what COVID was. COVID was that all of a sudden wake up. Like we did not have the great resignation and quiet quitting all of a sudden. This has happened slowly, dripping, dripping, dripping by these micro actions and micro movements. And then at mass scale, it was all revealed at the same time, like it happened all of a sudden. No one should be surprised that existed. I think the surprise was that it was so collective and so public, but that it occurs, that it occurred, not a surprise at all.

36:28Well, I'll tell you another thing that played into that is we are all so busy that most of us aren't analyzing our human condition. But in that time, people had more time to think about things. And I think so many of them realized, man, I hate what I'm doing. Why do I keep doing this? Why am I doing this? So Angela, what have you found is the cost to an individual and then to society, if you could go through each one, when people go through life believing they don't matter? I don't think there's a greater cost. I think there's this invisible pandemic that we have called insignificance. And I think it is the greatest danger to an individual, to an organization, to our humanity.

37:16because when we feel insignificant and we feel like our presence doesn't matter in the world, which is the definition of mattering, every aspect of our life is affected. So I do this exercise in my speeches or workshops because I want people to experience mattering because it can be experienced and activated so quickly. And so I'll have them close their eyes and I'll read some statements like, I, John, I see you. I hear you. When I saw your face today, I breathed a sigh of relief. I couldn't imagine doing this without you. Just simple statements. And then I asked people, how does that feel? Just in those seconds, how did it feel to just hear those things?

38:07Where did it resonate? And you will get like profound feelings. And then I show the whole, like in a word bubble, like imagine people coming to the world, feeling any one of these things, let alone multiple, feeling appreciated, feeling valuable, feeling worthy, feeling beautiful, feeling strong, feeling hopeful. That's one of the biggest words that comes out, feeling hopeful, feeling motivated, feeling energized. So when you look at every metric we have, whether it's a health metric, whether it's an academic metric, whether it's a metric that a Fortune 500 company has or a small business has, every metric, every measure, everything that we achieve or envision is impacted by how human beings show up.

38:56and you show up differently to the world when you know you matter because you feel these things. It is in your DNA. You're wired for that. So when individuals don't feel these things or repeatedly don't feel or experience any of those things, if you can imagine that word cloud up, they're going to show up differently and they may get through work or they may get through this, but it, the long-term impact, it is inseparable from every aspect of our life. It's inseparable from our health. It's inseparable from our energy and ability to be productive. It's inseparable from how we show up in relationships.

39:45So how you show up in the world matters. and it is impacted not just by our perceptions, but by what we deeply need to feel. These aren't ego driven things. These are driven by our DNA. When I think about this, and it took me a long time to get here, and Gord is now talking about this as well. I, for such a long time, like I think most of society, I would bucket disengagement at work and people feeling burned out and exhausted in one bucket. I put loneliness in another bucket. I put hopelessness in another bucket. I put people who were broken and the homeless in another bucket. And then I started backtracking.

40:32And when you look at the word insignificance, When you reach a point, like we were talking about, where those micro elements are taken away from you so much, eventually it hockey sticks. And that's when all these conditions start happening. And I was on a podcast and they were asking me, what would you say to the person who doesn't feel significant? And I said, the first thing that you're probably thinking is that you're alone. And then I want you to tell you, the loneliness epidemic is saying 50 % of people feel this way. Right. 77 % of people are disengaged. You have this huge bucket. Yep. I'm like - That's been in Gallup for three decades.

41:16Ever since I've been reporting on Gallup in terms of workforce data, whether it's their individual workforce report or meta-analysis of many things, that's the number one thing. And that's why I said it's a range. it's literally an entire spectrum of everything from apathy to full-blown agony and everything in between. And we like pulling out those pieces because they seem more concrete and put a band-aid on that, like loneliness or even suicide. I don't think we have a loneliness problem. I think we have a mattering problem. I don't believe we have a suicide problem. I believe we have a mattering problem.

41:54Mattering comes first period, biologically, sociologically, physiologically. And if we guarantee those conditions, then we start, those are consequences of either feeling like you do matter, feeling significant or feeling insignificant. So we treat the symptom of insignificance, but we don't treat the core of what it takes to feel significant. And that is like my biggest frustration, because then we put, I think we've probably quadrupled the cost of, I know just from education in, we were doing post pandemic, how much money has been spent on SEL, social emotional learning, which is a joke in and of itself, but on all of these, now belonging is the big thing.

42:47Before we went through this loneliness thing, then we went through character, then we went through, I don't know, all the phases of education. Now it's on belonging. Everything is on belonging. And that was kindness. Kindness was a long time, then belonging. It's not that you're anti-kindness or you're anti-belonging. It's just those are these symptoms, these pieces, or these elements that can either contribute to significance or decrease someone's ability to feel significant. But we never ever talk about what those conditions are. And then we just keep going running around. Angela, I just want to stop you for a second because people are listening to this and they're saying, John and Angela are talking about mattering.

43:32And then she just said that social emotional learning - Yeah, no, but where you're going is social emotional learning has been focusing on belonging. And this is one of the things I don't think people understand that belonging is different than mattering. Zach Mercurio gave me a definition of this, but I'd love to hear yours. Yeah. So mattering to me at its core is your belief that you are significant to the world and those in it. Very simple. And it arises from two really key attributes that can be broken down. The first is, this is the show and tell, that you have something in your backpack that you bring to the world that has value, that's immutable, that you, because you exist, you have a backpack of experiences, of talents, of extraordinary insights and perspectives that is with you the moment you enter the world, this invisible backpack.

44:30You have value, period. And with that, we get our value acknowledged when people see us, when they hear us, when they have smiling eyes, when they're present with us, all of those things. But the second part of mattering that has to be there for mattering to arise is that we give value to other people. Yes, we matter because we exist, but we were not created to exist. We were created for significance. So we are there in the world because someone else in that world needs exactly what we have and what we bring to it. And withholding that doesn't just hurt them. It actually hurts us because it's through our ability to give value away, to serve, to impact, to leave people better off than we found them that we get to significance.

45:34Success is about usually our individual metric. That's why I've been pondering this really deep question. I don't know the answer to it, but you know how Jim Collins rocked my world when he said, good is the enemy of great. Literally, I was like, that is a typo because we live in this world where it's the opposite, where you get good and a little bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better and maybe you hit great. But he literally rocked my whole existence when he's like, good is the enemy of great. And I'm like, are we at that precipice where success is the opposite of significance and that we can pursue success, which we see thousands of examples of people achieving the highest levels of anything humanly possible that could be celebrated at gold medal level or have the talent of Whitney Houston or Michael Jackson and then find out that they still laid their head down and didn't think they were enough for the world.

46:35But when you pursue significance, when which a requirement of that is that others are included, that you are sharing something, that you create a condition where you are needed, whether you are relied on, whether you are counted on, that's actually what gives your life meaning. Viktor Frankl wrote all about this in A Man's Search for Meaning in the Most Horrendous Conditions. And that I just taught, I was on a leadership podcast earlier and the CEO of this company that's like a$400 million company was saying, my legacy is to impart that leadership isn't about you. That leadership is about how you leave people.

47:19and I'm just like, it's such a simple concept, but that's the opposite of success because we've created leadership or we've created status or success is that you have made it to the top of your qualifiers. And maybe the world agrees with those qualifiers and you can have that label or title, but it doesn't make you satisfied. It doesn't make you feel complete. And it certainly doesn't make you feel fulfilled. You're fulfilled when you know that somebody's day is different. Somebody showed up in the world differently because of you. Well, unfortunately in the company environment, and I've been with some of the biggest companies in the world, everything is driven by the external metrics, especially if you're a public company that you're valued by.

48:10So typically that shareholder value, which then is driven by like your top line and your bottom line. So that's where all the attention goes. So what has happened in corporations now for a very long time is the employees just become utilities of that. So to me, it's really going to take systems change of having the metrics around which we judge what success is at a higher, more macro level to get this to change within companies. But when I was at Lowe's, I tell this story, I took over this function and I was inheriting a mess to begin with because Lowe's had undergone the worst hacking incident in the history of retail.

49:02This was like in 2004. I did not know that. And so you already had this huge issue. And then the group that I took over, which was responsible for fixing it, we had a new head of HR who'd come in about six months before I got there. And she did the first employee engagement survey. And she sits me down like I'm in week two. And she goes, John, I know you got to fix this whole security thing. But the survey came back and you have the most disengaged group in the entire company. 320 ,000 employees and engaged. And what I found when I started to interview my customers and my peers is they're like your group is like a bunch of absentees they don't know what the heck they're doing you should just get rid of all of them and then when I started talking to them yes what I inherited was a bunch of ghosts because they had no idea how anything that like they did mattered to anything right and then their leadership couldn't have cared anything about what their dreams or aspirations were.

50:14You just described my husband's company, which he literally counting the days he's been with this company for almost 30 years. And every day, like I even said, like his voice, you can feel like the soul being sucked out of him. And it's the level in which this large company treats their employees like should be studied. And it's not unique, whether it's his company or another one, It is, I don't understand how companies can afford to ignore this. You ignore it at your peril. And even with examples like Starbucks and Disney and all of these places, Zappos that prove that mattering pays off, that heart share trumps market share and mind share.

50:57They still just operate. I just don't understand it. I don't understand how you can treat your employees like this and expect, I don't get it. Zappos is such a sad story because here you have Tony who is trying to create a company to make everyone feel like they mattered when he himself, especially after Amazon purchased them, lost his own significance. And when I asked you that question, what is the cost? He paid the ultimate cost because he felt so insignificant. His life ended at 46. Just, yeah. And that's, I bring that up because that is, that's what we're talking about here. We keep, I was talking to a friend who is now trying to help the current administration deal with suicides in the veteran community.

51:52And it's like, no matter how much money they throw at this, it's not changing. And I had a friend who did a TED talk on this and you know how much background research TED does before you present anything. And he did this TED talk and he's during the 20 year war on terror, there were 5 ,000, 6 ,000 service members who lost their lives. Terrible. But he goes, if you look at how many suicides there were in the same period of time, it was well over 150 ,000 and that's not counting active duty. Right, right. So you can see the ramifications of this. And I think a ton of them could be linked directly to this.

52:32100%. It is where my urgency comes from. I'm sad that an employee is disengaged or doesn't bring their best self to work, but we are not just talking about life affirming things or life changing things like creating a different culture at your work. We're talking about life saving. And that's probably the realm that I spend the most time in and really understand when you dig down into it. I have so many communities and store. I worked with this. It was at five communities that in 20, in five months had 28 suicides, the youngest five years old. So they created this task force with every touch point from first responders to hospitals, to parents, to schools, to everything.

53:19And we put all that data together. The foundational thing discovered was that if you asked everyone in that community, does this kid matter to you? Would you care if they showed up? Their perception was that if I didn't show up, nobody would notice and nobody would care. And so we have this perception gap. That's why we have a perception problem, because we perceive and want to believe that everybody we touch knows that they matter. when the reality is if we presented mattering as it should be, like an essential need, food, water, shelter, air, then we would take care of each other as a community and understand that without being seen, without being heard, without understanding our value, without an opportunity to contribute that value, we are withholding basic needs.

54:12This isn't a nicety. It's not an employee engagement. It's not a theme to kick off the school year. This is about life, living fully, flourishing, and closing your eyes at the end of the day, no matter how imperfect you were in that day or the day itself was, knowing that you're going to get back up the next day and do it all again because there's people that are counting on you. You are needed. Angela, since you brought this back to children, because I think this manifests then later for adults who do the same thing. Why does some children act out while others withdraw when they feel they don't matter?

54:51because we will do anything. So this goes back to the mattering instinct from the moment we are born for your community, that this is new. The moment an infant comes out, our first act as a living, breathing human being is to twist our necks, to look up and to have our existence acknowledged. And infants who don't get this go into failing to thrive. So there's a physical response. So before we ask for food, before we belong, before we decide if we're lonely and need people around, mattering comes first. So what we don't understand is that every breath after that, we are on a quest for significance.

55:35So we don't wear a sign that says, do I matter to you? But every day as human beings, just like we don't wear a sign that says, I need to eat three times a day or I get really grumpy, or I need seven hours of sleep because if you saw me on four hours of sleep, you don't want to be around me, or I'm going to show up at the bare minimum today because I have not been drinking water. I've been drinking soda or whatever it is. That's what those elements are. That's what those are conditions of being human. And they are the foundation, not only of our liveliness, they're the foundation of our dignity.

56:13So not only are we taking like essential biological needs away, like we would withholding sleep or withholding food or water. Food and water and sleep are not found, they're foundational, but they don't directly relate to our dignity immediately. But when we feel invisible or we feel unheard, or we feel like the world is not going to care if I don't show up today, then we're losing our humanity by ignoring mattering. And so the level of urgency for the world to understand that this is the most powerful force and we have 50 years of science to back it up, it is heartbreaking to be like, I've never heard of nutrition and how nutrition is linked to health.

57:04It's like that blatant. And mattering is still in the scheme, not our world, but in the scheme of the world, something that even the world's most elite don't know about. And we've got to stop that. That's my mission. Do you think it's more damaging for a child to receive negative attention or for them to be ignored entirely? And why? I think that, so I'll go back to, I should have answered your first question, which is every breath after that first breath, we are on a quest to matter. And we will pursue that biologically, subconsciously, no matter where that leads. And if we're not getting it in a positive way, then we're going to get it in a negative way.

57:55From personal experience, I think, obviously, negative behavior gets attention. It gets attention. Even if it's in the wrong way, it gets something. I think one of the cruelest things that we can do to human beings is not see them, make them feel non-existent and invisible. So I think that has far more reaching damaging effects than punishment of bad behavior. And you can look into all the research on solitary confinement. You can look on all the research on invisibility. I think the dangers are that you are much more likely, I believe, let's say you were a naughty kid in school and you got disciplined a lot and you spent a lot of time in the principal's office.

58:43I don't necessarily see a prison population, like a direct line from that, but kids that were forsaken, were ignored and completely just looked over that they score. and Gordon would be better to talk about this higher on the anti-mattering scale. That's my gut feeling. I don't have the hardcore numbers, but I don't think there's anything more heart wrenching. When you think of invisibility, you think of agony. It's agonizing feeling invisible. You physiologically ache when you're just trying to say, do I matter to you? Do you hear me? Do you see me versus getting in trouble for doing something, you're still getting feedback.

59:35You're still getting attention. You're still being noticed. So I don't know. That is a good Gordon question. And when I go back to that example of my, my father, he was in a system. And I think a lot of people who he's 87 now who grew up at that time, they were praised for being silent. Don't make any noise. Don't disturb. If dad's had a hard day at work, he's drinking, just be silent. But I think the modern world is so many parents do excessive praise and overprotection of their kids. How does that distort a child's internal sense of mattering? Because the child never gets the experience of being needed by someone else.

1:00:22The child never builds resilience or self-efficacy or agency, which are critical to all of their development, not just academically, but emotionally. in relationships that form, we are creating a generation of human beings that have been denied the opportunity to find out how strong they are, have been denied the opportunity to find out what they are truly capable of, because it is through those obstacles, it is through pain and heartbreak that we discover, and not just from others, but for ourselves. Yes, this is horrible, but I know I can make it. I know I am capable. If this happens again, I know exactly what to do and what not to do.

1:01:17When you take away all of that, all of the struggle as a parent, and on top of that, you give kids everything to continually make them feel good. This goes to worthiness. Worthiness is deep in our DNA. It's not conditional on the outside. You cannot throw worthiness at somebody else. You've got this trophy that then it's about the parents perception of worthiness. It's not about the kid at all. My kid goes to the school. My kid has this, my kid. That's great. You can be proud of your kid, but it's a fine line because if you don't have an example of pain that your child has handled on their own, that you have been their buffer for everything, that it is so dangerous because we have human beings that don't know how to build up their own courage muscles.

1:02:17They do not know how to intentionally lean into discomfort because everything in their life has been at the minimum comfortable. And I get that as a parent, it is so hard to watch your kids struggle. And it is so easy to want to jump in and fix it. And yet I look at every lesson in my life, every scar I have, every failure, massive failures that I've done has given me confidence that no accolade, no grade, no pat on the back, no anything, that's who I am and who I know who I am. Not because someone else built that or made that. It's because I know what I'm made of. I know what I'm capable of. You can't buy that.

1:03:08There's no program for that. Experience is that. Life is that. And if you thwart life's experiences, then you are literally taking away that child's ability to live fully. And parents don't get that. And it's a really hard conversation that I have with parents. And it just keeps getting worse and worse. I've never seen such a coddled generation. I've never seen, and even I was just saying to my husband the other night, like even characters on TV that we used to look up to, like that there was a scene, like it was a, I think it was like a Saturday Night Live skit and it was a godfather scene where Marlon Brando was just like slapping the person or not Marlon but whoever was in the godfather was just like slapping them up the side because the son was crying or whining and he's like get out there it was ridiculous like it's just hard to watch because it's a little bit at a time and then it's all of a sudden you have an entire generation that that truly hasn't gone through I know COVID was hard and I know there's hardships in the world, but not hardships like our grandfather went through, not hardships like our parents went through, like a whole different criteria of what is a hardship.

1:04:24It completely is. One, I think some of that resilience is extremely important, which is, and I've sent you a copy of my children's book, but I'm so excited for that. One of the last things I did when I was writing it is I put in a whole two scenes into it where I wanted the children reading it to see the main character going through a turbulent time because I wanted them to see that even at some points when we feel like we matter and we find that superpower and everything feels great, life has ups and downs and you're going to run into them. But that doesn't mean going back to your$100 bill thing, that when you go through that down period, that you matter any less.

1:05:12That's right. And that's what I was trying to restore. Yes, absolutely. So thinking of this restoration, do you think one person can restore mattering for someone else? A hundred percent. Yes. Let me rephrase that. Anyone at any time, anywhere can change the state of someone's mattering by creating conditions. Complete strangers. We often think of mattering with people that we love and serve, and that's important, but do not underestimate our role with strangers as well. I forgot I was listening to, I love the hidden brain. And there was a psychologist that did all this research on a train about our interactions with strangers on a train and followed the different train rides and how different it made people when you actually engage, because you have no idea what another human is carrying in the milliseconds before they enter your presence.

1:06:13But you have the power to make, even if it's a small interaction, let's say it's at the grocery store, let's say you're walking down the sidewalk. You don't know if that moment of mattering, that millisecond of mattering is exactly what they needed to make it through the next minute of their life, let alone the next day. And there are story after story, like it is a moment like this, when somebody noticed me, when somebody just helped me, when this is the kindness of strangers. Like it's not always, mattering doesn't always, in fact, I would say often doesn't come from the people that we expect it to, the people in our immediate world, our friends, our family, all of that, because we get too comfortable with each other.

1:07:01But when you know that, like I'm flying all the time and every airport has a story, every trip that I take, I'm like, okay, here's another airport story. Here's another story. There's a bazillion of them just watching how human beings treat each other. And there was this mom on a flight and I was struggling. The baby was crying. It was a really long flight. And she was just struggling with everybody. And I'm like, if you trust me, I can either help your stuff or I can hold this. You're doing a great job. This is really hard. I cannot imagine traveling with a baby and a toddler. And she literally just broke down.

1:07:39She just sobbing. And she's like, thank you for, cause I knew at that moment, she's feeling like a bad mom. Like she's feeling like she can't handle it. I'm like, it is, you're doing everything you can. And we're all standing around watching you struggle. And it just took that. It didn't change. The baby still cried. And the two-year-old was still grumpy and it wasn't a smooth flight, but it was a lot better because the mom entered it better because of someone else, because of me at that moment. And it's not because I'm such this extraordinary person. Everybody has the power. We underestimate the power of something as simple as a smile or eye contact, or just listening to somebody vent about what happened with their flight and missing luggage.

1:08:26And people don't need you to solve a lot of what they're saying. They just need to feel heard and validated. So yes, I think we can absolutely at any moment choose to matter, choose to create the conditions of mattering for somebody else. And in turn, you are creating those, it's reciprocal. You're creating it for yourself because you made yourself valuable. You made yourself needed and appreciated. Does that change their life? Does it save their life? You can't say that, but you also can't say when and where, just like all of a sudden you feel like you don't matter. The same moments add up for all of a sudden you feel like, you know what, I'm really glad I showed up today.

1:09:11So I don't underestimate moments and I don't underestimate the time, the very short time we have with people. I think what you're saying is what a lot of people don't understand is just like we lose mattering and these small actions that take it away. It's the small actions that build it back. So my example is my wife is a primary care provider and she loses a lot of her energy because she spends her whole day caring for other people. And so all her action of feeling like she matters is just getting to vent to me about what would happen in her day. And that's really a small action by me doing it.

1:09:55And when people ask me the question, what can a parent do to make a child feel like they matter? I always say, it's the same thing you said, like the first minute that you walk into the room in the morning or when you get home, don't ask them about their homework. Don't ask them if they got their chores done. Look at them, smile at them because it makes them realize that they are the most important thing in your life. 100%. And I would say, I would carry that out, John, and say that goes for anybody. If you had one quick, what do you call it, anecdote or one quick jab of the vaccine for not feeling like you matter, it would be presence.

1:10:43And it said, I was listening to a TED Talk last week, new science out of Harvard on occupancy, filling it with things that make us feel all of those things, sad and stressed and anxious and all of that. but that can be cured with, they were saying one to 10 minutes of presence every day. I would say it's more Malcolm Gladwell's blink, 10 to 20 seconds of presence every day. And so by giving your presence deliberately, and it requires deliberateness. It is, our brains are wiring different because we're in such a busy, distracted world on top of our mindlessness, but we need to be mindful of mattering.

1:11:31Mindfulness absolutely is a great body of research we can go to, but we've got to attach mattering to mindfulness because it isn't just minding our own business or minding what our goals are, minding what's going to make us feel better. The ultimate act of making us feel better is to leave someone else better off than you found them. That is the greatest way. It's like a straight shot of dopamine when you know, and we do that not through a grand act, not through performing a feat. It is through a simple act of presence. Notice, acknowledge, value, help, smile, inspire, look into the eyes of another human being, because that in every aspect is saying to them, you matter.

1:12:21You are worth me stopping my mind wandering and you are worth it. And what is spectacular is the things you will learn, the insights you will give, even if it is a person that is irritating you at the airport, it is that person is put in your pathway to teach you something, if not patience or empathy or whatever. We build those things that make us not only good human beings, but strong, powerful, impactful human beings. We build them in many moments. I even hate saying moments because it doesn't take 60 seconds. It can take two seconds, three seconds, four seconds to get to that part of our brain.

1:13:07And it changes everything. Angela, since you brought it up, the last thing I want to talk about social media. So over the past three, four weeks, Meta has undergone a huge trial out in California. And there are many things that I've seen there that have been quite disturbing. One of them being the filters that they knew kids under 13 were using millions of them. Yet they, not only, even after he was told by 18 scientific experts not to do it, they leaned into it even more because they were trying to up the consumption to over 45 minutes a day. But then I start looking at the other targeting that they were trying to do to kids.

1:13:54But if we look at this even beyond kids, do you think online visibility increases or decreases felt significance? I think that technology is a mirror and it will advance whoever the human is. So you can fake that for a little bit and you can try to get away with a persona online. But I think the greatest compliments that I ever get about social media is you're exactly like I thought you would be. You're exactly like who you are, as if that's a surprise. And now I take that as a badge of honor. And I think when you enter that space, feeling like you are there to hit a number, or you are there to compete, or you are there for a metric, or you are there to do anything but matter, truly matter, just get attention, negative or positive, that it's going to lead to emptiness, that you might have success.

1:15:02You might be an influencer or whatever, but it's an empty. That's why I keep going back to my Jim Collins dilemma is success in the way we measure it, in the way we promote it. Is that the opposite of significance? Because if you go there as an amplifier of who you are and truly who you are, then it amplifies your life. So when I look at what social media has done. I'm here with you. What a great honor. Literally, what a great honor. When in any other hemisphere would I be able to connect with you and now to be able to talk to you and then hopefully as we continue to talk, call you a friend, a real friend.

1:15:45I don't see any difference between in real life and online. Some of my deepest, most prolific humans in my life. Gordon is a perfect example. We're writing a book and I'm trying to get him to the US, but he won't come. But I don't know when I'll meet him. I literally don't know when I'll meet him. And I've probably told him more than I've told some of my colleagues I've worked for a decade. So I think when we start seeing technology, not as anything other than an amplifier and a magnifier of our humanity, then we're in trouble and it doesn't matter. Like I would say my social media, because I've been writing, has gone way down, but I'm finding deeper ways to engage with people.

1:16:35Like I've never been on TikTok. My social media accounts got hacked. My identity was stolen and auctioned off with a ransom. I didn't pay the ransom. So they erased. So I had to build from starting a year and a half ago, build from ground zero. And I thought my life, I really went through a really bad thing. Oh my God, who am I? And I'm like, I'm exactly who I've always been. It may have less numbers. I may not have 25 years of content out there because they took all my content, but I know who I am. And I've been that person consistently enough that it's been a joy building back up my community because I didn't look at like my numbers or I did 25 years of content that I put in that completely, I literally started at zero pieces of content, all my Instagram, all everything.

1:17:30So it has been a lesson. It's been a humbling experience that I did get hacked because it makes you really think about, do I really feel the closest relationships on Instagram? Do I need to dance on TikTok or be? No, my goal is to advance this message. And I know I could be doing it in better ways, but it is who I am. There's nothing different about talking to you if you were sitting in my living room, or I just think authenticity is a rarity online and people, because they want to matter so much. And I get that, that they have conditional mattering and it's empty at the end of the day. So I unfortunately went through something similar to what you did.

1:18:21PassionStruck has quite a lot of downloads and people look, especially on Apple now, and they go, why are your likes not higher? And what most people don't realize is at one point I had 20 ,000 likes. And then I had an entity in India start posting one-star reviews non-stop. They were posting like 50, 60, 70. And they started to come to me saying that they wanted tens of thousands of dollars to stop. Yes. And so I went to Apple and asked them to intervene. I didn't pay them. I went to Apple and Apple put a stop to it, but they said, unfortunately, the way we're going to have to do this is we're going to have to take you to zero yes yes it has been brutal because to build it back it took forever to reach there and now it's a slow thing but i wasn't going to sacrifice my soul for that so i didn't and i have to tell you one other thing is i had jim collins booked oh two weeks ago oh and i was so he's taking up my life and i was excited because i wanted to talk to him about this topic.

1:19:30And unfortunately he just canceled. Oh, because he's back on and you have to tell me when, because I've got to know if he thinks about that. So you asked him, is the opposite of significant? And the reason we have so few people finding and living a life of significance is because they're so damn successful, which is the second line of good to great. Well, Angela, it's been such a joy to have you here today. And it's one of those rare conversations that I get to talk to someone who is as passionate about the topic as I am. So thank you so much for joining. It was such an honor. Oh my gosh, John, if you have not been told today, you matter what you're doing, keep building and keep being you.

1:20:15I'm so honored to be in this conversation with you, to be doing this work with you. And we have a mission. We still have work to do. So I can't wait for your book and I cannot wait for the conversations to come. So thank you and to all your community and go make somebody's day. My kindergartners say, be somebody like that's my call for today. Be somebody. So thank you very much. And I forgot to ask Angelo, where's the best place for the audience to learn more about you, your books, your children's book. You got to hold it up because you've got a great publishers, but it's called M is for matterings and i understand your son is the artist yes i've got to show you look at this look at these beautiful illustrations i know i'm biased i know i'm totally biased but he is yes he did such a great job did an amazing job it about killed us as a relationship to do this together but it was a learning experience because working with an artist is different than working with an illustrator.

1:21:17So I get that now because everything that I needed to edit was like taking his work. And he said it was like taking a chisel to it to the point he's like, I don't even want my name on the book anymore because I never thought about that. He's an artist. Like as I'm a writer, taking and chiseling words that I have, like an illustrator creates the pictures for your words. an artist creates art and trying to match that up was a huge learning experience but yes so just message me so if you literally type in you matter angela you'll get to all my stuff but i'm angela meyers everywhere so on the platform m m a i e r s yes yes so reach out and again so grateful for you i'm just so grateful to gordon for connecting us like i've known about you and been in your realm men for a long time.

1:22:11And to be able to talk to you and see your passion and see your commitment to this mission, it just makes me even more excited to do better. Thank you so much. Yes. Bye. Bye. That brings us to the end of today's conversation with Angela Myers. What stood out most to me is this. We often think that the biggest challenges we face are external. Too much work, too much stress, too many demands. But what Angela makes clear is something much deeper, that beneath so many of those struggles is a quiet, often invisible experience, that feeling that we don't matter. And when that feeling takes hold, we don't just disengage from work, we disconnect from ourselves.

1:22:50We begin to question our worth, we start shrinking our voice, and over time we lose sight of who we really are. But the opposite is also true, because when someone feels like they matter, everything changes. They show up differently, they engage differently, they live differently. and that's what makes this idea so powerful. Because mattering isn't something reserved for a few people, it's something we can create and how we show up and how we listen and how we make others feel seen. And that insight leads directly into our next conversation because if today's episode is about understanding why you matter, next week we explore how to reconnect with the parts of yourself that may have been hidden along the way.

1:23:27I'm joined by number one New York Times bestselling author, Kayla Shaheen. In this conversation, we dive into the relationship between shadow work and light work and what it means to integrate both. We explore why so many of us carry hidden emotional weight from earlier in life and how to show up more fully and authentically in your life. If Angela Myers helps us understand the importance of mattering, Kayla Shaheen helps us understand how to reconnect with the parts of ourselves that make that mattering possible. You won't want to miss it. Becoming aware of the inner voices within you and what they're doing and what functions they have in yourself.

1:24:03And then striving for wholeness, which is found in the present moment. If you're aware of all your senses here and now, then you can show up more presently and consciously versus if you're not feeling your senses and your mind is somewhere else and you're striving for perfection, then that really takes you outside and into a liminal place that doesn't exist, but we're creating on our minds. If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need it. Leave a five-star rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and pre-order The Mattering Effect coming October 6th. Until next time, remember, you don't have to earn your worth.

1:24:41You don't have to prove your value. You already matter. The question is, will you start living like it? I'm John Miles, and you've been PassionStruck.

1:24:59Thank you.