Mattering: The Secret to Building a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose w/ Jennifer Wallace

0:00The following podcast is a Dear Media Media Production.

0:09Welcome to Raising Good Humans podcast. I'm Dr. Aliza Pressman, and I'm so excited to share with you this episode on mattering with New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Wallace. Mattering, the secret to a life of deep connection and purpose. Jenny wrote a book that we've talked about a couple of times on this podcast called Never Enough. And this is the book that she wished she had written before she wrote Never Enough about achievement culture and kind of the toxic part of achievement culture and what we can do about it. And the real antidote is for humans, adults, and kids to have a deep sense of mattering.

0:57So that's today's episode. And I hope everybody enjoys 2026 as a year to both feel deep mattering themselves and to give others that deep sense. And we're going to show you how to do that. All right. So we have been waiting for this mattering book since you wrote Never Enough. can you just help everybody frame what is mattering? Why did you realize or how did you realize how important mattering was? And maybe just a little bit for those who don't know what Never Enough was, just in case on the off chance that they don't know about all of this. Can you frame this? Can you tee up this conversation?

1:43Totally. So I published Never Enough about achievement culture in young people and how there was so much pressure on young people to achieve that they were struggling with heightened anxiety, depression, substance abuse disorder. And I went in search of the kids who were doing well, despite the pressure. They had a lot in common, but it boiled down to mattering that the kids who were doing well, despite the pressure, felt like they mattered for who they were at their core, away from their achievements and successes. and importantly, they were relied on, depended on to add value back to their families through chores at school in the wider community.

2:24So these kids had a kind of protective shield. Didn't mean that they didn't have setbacks. It didn't mean that they didn't bomb tests or not get into the college that they wanted to. But mattering acted like a kind of buoy that would lift them up. So their setbacks were not an indictment of their worth. They felt like they mattered no matter what. So what I heard over and over again in my conversations with families was that so many of the adults felt like they didn't matter. You know, I spoke with doctors who worked at major medical centers who felt crushed by insurance companies. One doctor described feeling like she was being killed death by a thousand clicks because her entire practice had transformed from looking at her patient's eyes to looking at the computer screen.

3:10Other people I interviewed were people working in finance who felt completely interchangeable that if they stopped going to work and quit, the next day they'd easily be replaced. They didn't feel known. They felt lonely in their workplaces. They felt lonely in their neighborhoods. They didn't know their neighbors. They felt lonely in their friendships, even their good friendships. They didn't feel known. They didn't feel prioritized. so for this book and what i what i've come to realize is that if we want to make a dent in the youth mental health crisis we need to go upstream and take care of the adults in their lives that our children's sense of mattering unconditional worth uh it rests on the adults in their lives feeling it as well feeling it modeling it creating an ecosystem so that children can grow up in that ecosystem of mattering.

4:03Okay. So what is mattering? Exactly. You just interview yourself. That's exactly right. So mattering is a fundamental human need that all of us have. It's universal to feel valued and to have an opportunity to add value to the world around us. and this need you know we inherited it from our earliest ancestors to matter to the band to matter to each other was how we survived feeling like we didn't matter to the group we weren't valued meant certain death sense of mattering is still wired in us today and what I have found in my research and what I argue in the book is that I have yet to meet someone who fully experiences this, well, that's not true.

4:51I have met people who fully experience mattering and I talk about them in the book, but the overwhelming majority of people are walking around today having this unmet need to matter. And I think it's because so many of us are living our lives on autopilot. We have so much incoming, so many demands on our time, our mental bandwidth, and so many expectations of output that we're just going on autopilot to get through our day. But what I love about mattering is that it wakes you up to the world and it helps you notice the positive impact you make. And it prompts you to want to tell others the positive impact they make on your life.

5:35Okay. So, cause part of this is like, are you even noticing? Like you don't know what you don't know. So some people might be on autopilot and not even know the impact that this has. So the awareness of it, I think like first steps, but can you kind of go through your said framework so that we can make this really concrete? Great. So I will say like the symptoms of feeling like you don't matter are the symptoms of loneliness, disengagement, sense of meaninglessness, a sense of purposelessness. So if you are feeling those feelings, um mattering can help you to me i have found mattering to be the ultimate and only self-help tool that we probably need both for our own health but also our social health which is really fraying right now so this said work here's here's what i love about mattering researchers have found the ingredients to mattering this is not a mystery there is a way of dialing up our sense of mattering in ourselves and in the people that we care about.

6:43So I put together something called the SED framework that really hits on the four core components to mattering. So it's feeling significant, feeling appreciated, feeling invested in, and feeling depended on. So I'll just quickly break it down for you. So feeling significant is not, you know, having people toast you every week. You know, those are great, right? We have moments, milestones where we really feel a sense of significance. But what we crave as humans is significance in the mundane, to matter in the mundane, to matter in our daily lives. And so to feel a sense of significance is to feel like you are important to the people around you, that you are prioritized in some way.

7:34and the way we can make people in our life feel prioritized. My mother does this. I call it mattering is in the details. So my mother remembers small things about, you know, my daughter loves rigatoni. So my mother knows when she's cooking on Christmas, you know, when she's cooking, my mother knows when she's cooking dinner for us that my daughter will love rigatoni and she loves it cooked al dente. That is mattering. That is knowing I know this child, her needs are a priority in my mind. So mattering is just in these small little details, feeling appreciated. Does your daughter then not even, maybe not on purpose, but just show your mom how much she matters for having noticed that, how she appreciates it?

8:24Yes, she appreciates it. And here's how she appreciates it. So there are a couple of ways we can appreciate. One that just appreciates the deed, like thanks grandma for making this delicious pasta, or it's thanking someone in a way that reinforces the sense of mattering. So grandma, thank you so much for always thinking about me. You make me feel so important. You know everything I love and you are such an incredibly devoted grandmother. That is a way of feeding someone's need. So it's appreciating the doer behind the deed. So that's how we reinforce mattering. If you're in the workplace, instead of saying to your colleague who's always putting together the five o 'clock drinks, you know, instead of saying thank you for always gathering us together for happy hour to really reinforce mattering, you would say thank you for being the kind of colleague that always thinks about the best way to build community.

9:21It's because of you that we are so close as a department. So it's appreciating the doer behind the deed. I love it. The next thing is invested in. So we all know how important it is to have people in our lives that we feel are invested in our success that want to see us succeed, that are invested in our goals. But we rarely talk about in our zero sum culture, what it does to someone to be the investor, to be what I call in the book, a corner man. So if you don't know what a corner man is, I didn't know before researching this book. A corner man is somebody who works with a boxer in the ring during the tournament.

10:04He's there. He can see around edges. He can see what the boxer can't see. He can deliver tough love when he needs it. That fighter's success, that boxer's success feels like their success. What I love about investment when it comes to mattering is this concept that researchers call ego extension. It sounds really wonky, but stick with me here. Ego extension is this idea of extending your ego, right? I physically think about extending my ego. So it includes the success of the people in my life that I care about. So their successes feel like my successes. And I say this all the time to my kids that if you are looking for more joy in your life, and I say this to anybody, you need to tap into the joy of your friends.

10:56I love nothing. Most of my joy in my life, frankly, is my friends' successes. I have so many wonderful friends doing wonderful things. I get so much joy from that. And I think in our zero-sum culture, this hyper-competitive culture that we sometimes feel like we live in, we feel like it's unnatural that somebody else's win is our loss, but we're not wired to be that way. We are wired to want success for our band, to want success for the people in our group. And so I would encourage people to tap into that because that is a free resource of joy. I'm smiling so big. I have to interrupt this one part because I just know you and I like you, you do this, like you live this.

11:47And it's so hard not to like feel like well up as you're talking about it, because I just know that you walk this walk and it feels so good to be in your band, you know? Thank you. I feel very invested in you. And you are one of the, you are one of the people that I get a lot of joy from. You have a lot of fun to watch you soar. It's just so fun to watch the people in our lives soar. So anyway, thank you. And thank you for your investment in me. And one of my love languages, and you provide this for me, as do the people that I really trust in my circle. One of my love languages is frank feedback.

12:29I want to know. I want to know how to do something better, what I didn't do right. I trust. So that to me is an act of love. when people are willing to invest in me and deliver me news so that I can get better. I don't need people in my life. I have them and they're lovely who are very flattering and compliment me. That's so nice, but that's not an investment in me. The people that are invested in me are the people willing to say the hard things so I can be better. But I think like you mean that and also just like it's because of what you said, the deep investment. I don't think it would come across well if it was like not rooted in, I'm so in your corner.

13:15I have to tell you this because I'm so excited to watch you soar versus I really enjoy just nitpicking or like giving negative feedback. Yes. And I think the way to sort of feel the difference between those is, and I say this to my kids, this was something I didn't learn early enough in life, But notice your nervous system when you're around somebody. Is this someone that you can feel comfortable with, at peace with, vulnerable with? Or is this someone where you feel like you need to watch what you say, that your body knows if this is a person that is invested in you and has your vested interest?

13:57I mean, there must be a term for this in psychology that I don't know. Well, I mean, you talk about that term. That's attunement. That's attunement. It really is. And we'll get to it. But like, it's a different kind of attunement, because we think of attunement as this like deeper connection that feels like, like it couldn't spread across like a larger group in your life. But actually, how your nervous system feels when you're in the room with someone. the positive version of that is like this attunement that you're co-regulating together and you're just like I like we're safe together let's just do this versus that sense of exact description you gave and your physicality of like buttoning up your shirt and just feeling like I have to be on guard it's something we really need to get our kids to understand through our lived day-to-day experience of like, there really are those people that you're just like, okay, we're here.

14:58Like we've got each other. Like this whole conversation is authentic and we're safe. And there's just something so beautiful about it. And I think every single thing you describe is naming what really matters. What really matters. And now for a quick break. okay this one is awesome Experian it takes the pain out of canceling subscriptions by handling it for you just keep the ones you want and put money back in your pocket over 200 subscriptions are cancelable or negotiable and also you save money by letting Experian negotiate your best rate they'll keep an eye out for new deals and savings opportunities and they'll negotiate directly with your provider on your behalf the best part is that you keep 100 % of the savings so basically if you found yourself at the new year and you just like maybe got a little too friendly with your clicking twice on apple pay subscription situation you get excited about a lot of things you didn't pay attention to the fine print it really is helpful to have an app that can get you back to paying attention and getting out of some of these things so get started with Experian app now.

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18:16quince.com slash humans. Okay. So the last part of this, do we get to D? Because I interrupted you. So D is the idea that there are people that depend on you, that you are needed. One of the things that I think people really struggle with when they face an empty nest or they retire is the idea that they are not as needed anymore. We need to feel needed. The other thing I will say is that many people today reject the idea of being needed. Many people today do not want relationships that feel like others are relying on them. They want their freedom. And it's something that I just look at with a little bit of curiosity.

19:04Why is it that people don't want to be relied on anymore? And I think one of the reasons is that technology has made life so frictionless. It press a button and you can get your groceries delivered, press a button, you can get your food delivered, you can get your toiletries, You never have to interact with another human and how sometimes just going to the drugstore and having to wait in line and then somebody messes up and there are a lot, we have lost a tolerance for friction and human relationships provide friction and it's in the friction that meaning comes. And so if you are in your life thinking, I am feeling lonely.

19:51I am feeling like my relationships are hollow I think one of the things you could ask yourself is am I allowing friction I'm not saying friction having people in your life who drive you nuts and who don't have your best interest I'm saying like the everyday friction of a friend who's always a little late right somebody who you know says they're gonna call forgets to call like those are things that are annoyances and they create friction uh it's that is what that That's what life is about and the idea of the repair, that I can repair this friction and we can be even stronger because we matter to each other.

20:30And I think that gets lost when people cut people out of their lives so abruptly. I'm not saying that some people shouldn't be cut off, but I'm saying if you are feeling this loneliness, think about are you letting people rely and depend on you in healthy ways? so we should say it goes without saying that these conversations are not about the extremes where you're experiencing abuse from someone or neglect from someone and you need to cut them out of your life like let's just let go of needing to do caveat so we can just be comfortable we're talking about for the majority of people in the majority of circumstances and it's so true that like there's a difference between, you know, this is asking too much of me and realizing how we kind of need people to ask something of us.

21:22Like we forgot about that in this. It's kind of like in the independence culture, you were still people. We have to be interdependent. Like you, I mean, you know this, but I think that it's worth saying here that people might have overcorrected on certain things and now we're stuck alone. Yes, exactly. We're stuck alone. And some of the people that I've talked to in the book who were really struggling with not feeling like they mattered, describe feeling adrift. I think about if you're not dependent on, if you don't have people relying on you, that's when you feel like you're drifting. There was that book, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

22:05Oh my God, I love that book. The unbearable lightness of being is feeling like you don't matter. It's no one is relying on you. You are not getting that social proof that reliance offers you. Now, I want to make another caveat because I know that there are a lot of people listening who are caregivers and who might be saying, oh, the problem isn't that I don't matter. It's that I matter too much. Yeah. That I matter too much to my kids, to my workplace, to my aging parents. So that is not true mattering. True mattering is about balance, balancing our own needs with the needs of others. And I have struggled for years trying to figure out how to create that kind of balance.

22:49and our mutual contact, Sonia Luther, showed me how to create that kind of balance. She conducted a study at the Mayo Clinic where busy physician mothers were reporting low levels of well-being, feeling really stressed out at work and at home. And she had this small intervention to meet for one hour a week in these small groups where people could open up, where they could support one another. They did this for 12 weeks. Nobody dropped out. Cortisol levels, the stress hormone dropped. The women reported greater sense of well-being, even feeling like better parents. And so what I have come to realize as a caregiver, I have three teenagers, well, two teenagers and a 20-year-old, and I have an aging mother, is that I need to balance mattering to myself with mattering to others.

23:43And that is not something that we necessarily normalize or tell caregivers. And so just this little practice since researching mattering that I've started doing every morning I wake up and I say to myself, what is one small need that I have today that I need to meet so that I could show up as my best self for the people I care about? So in this way, self-care is other care. So that's one thing I do, one small need. So maybe it's having my coffee, going for a walk, whatever it is that's my, that is for me. I protect it. I don't wait until the to-do list is done and everybody else's needs are met.

24:21I've become a little radical in my self-prioritization. And I do make sure every day I have one need that is met. And the other thing I do is I have that group of corner women in my life, the women who I know are invested in me that I check in with. And I have these deep, meaningful friendships that feed my mattering and make me more resilient. The obligations that we've started to reject, like we don't want our kids to learn to say yes to things that they don't want to do somehow, like it's getting confused. So let's say you have a commitment to Sunday night with grandparents or I don't know, I'm fantasizing about like different rituals that you might have.

25:06So let's say it's like Sunday night with grandparents or Friday night game night with family. and over the years it starts to be burdensome to your kids. I feel like I'm trying to think of a good example. I'm sure you have one of how, what are the questions we can ask ourselves to decide how to get more comfortable saying, Hey, I know this feels like a demand that you don't want to do. And here's why your attendance matters, or here's why you're doing it anyway matters. Well, as you're talking, I'm hearing about something that came up again and again in my interviews with families about how parents would say things like, my child's job is to be a student, not to volunteer, not to do chores.

25:57their job is to do is to be a student. Another parent might say, you know, I don't get involved if my, I don't tell my children that they have to include other people. That's, I feel like that's not my job. They should be able to set their own social lives. And, you know, I'm sorry if feelings get hurt, that's life. And those two examples, I think, beg the question, you are so family is the first society, first introduction to society for a child. So learning how to be a contributing member to the family, like through chores, like through cleaning up after dinner, is how we raise future citizens of the world that know that they have a role, that they don't matter more than other people.

26:50They don't matter less than other people, but they have responsibilities. And so by, and the other thing, the mother who said to me, you know, my children make their own decisions. I'm with you. I don't tell my kids who to be friends with, but there is a bar that all of us have on how we need to behave with the people around us. And our behavior cannot be sending anti-mattering signals to people. And so you don't always get what you want. Sometimes you do have to include the person because not including them would be really devastating. And that's not who you are. You're not that person. So I guess what I'm talking about is helping our kids develop an other-oriented mindset.

27:41Yes. So balancing thinking about themselves and their own needs with the needs of others. You know. Because when we don't. No, everything you're saying is so important. So I am actually upset that I interrupted that thought. I mean, my point in saying this, ultimately, it comes down to our children developmentally have this very narrow self-focused lens on themselves. And I believe it is a parent's job to turn that lens outward, not just because we need to raise them to be good humans, but also because it is protective of them. That we know that these narrowly focused mindsets where I notice every flaw, every struggle that that sets my kid up for mental health struggles and social struggles.

28:35Yes. And getting into that other mindset is so protective. So thank you for saying that because yes, the, at first glance, it's also about like raising good humans and you're just like, these are the values in this household and we have to figure out a way to balance you having a sense of autonomy and agency, and also you feeling this sense that you are dependent on and also it's so protective to your point like we have to get out of our such inner focus i just think maybe this happened because we had no authentic inner focus like we weren't allowed to think about that long ago but now i think people are pretty good at thinking about, like, especially young people, what they need, unless you have like a real people-pleasing situation going on and everybody has, you know, knows their kids best.

29:31But I think what you're saying is such a beautiful way to get them out of that focus so they can actually get into mattering, like a deep sense of mattering. So I wonder, just because I think those are great examples. Something as simple as like, I was talking about dinner with grandparents or something on Sundays, but let's say you have so much homework because your kids are getting older and it's Sunday night and they like, don't clear the table and put the dishes away. And you feel guilty because you're like, they have so much work to do. It really does make a priority about the work and not the five minutes of giving to this community.

30:13So I actually do want you to talk more about that. I take it back. Well, I will say there is something which is called a helper's high, which is the idea that when we help others, we get a boost in energy. We often think that we need to protect our time or protect our kids' time, but actually having them use some of that time in ways that contribute to others is a way of boosting their energy. It's not a drain to help others. It's actually energizing. Okay. So we're helping others. We're thinking about mattering. We need to, we can't do this alone. There is a deep sense of loneliness. Can you talk a little bit about how we're creating the village that we need?

31:04Like what if people are like, I don't have, I don't even know where to begin, or I don't know how to do this. Yeah. So I think it's okay to not know how to do this. I think we have very much as a society, these skills, these social skills of building deep connections have atrophied. So one, I would say, don't judge yourself, right? Put it into context, understand that the world has shifted, and it is not just you. So I would say the first thing I would do is I would harness the power of invitation. And what I mean by that is, I'll give you an example. There was a woman I interviewed in the book who went through a horrible divorce and she was saying to her therapist, I'm tired of being the fifth wheel.