February 10, 2026 • 43 mins
If you’ve ever struggled to feel like you matter, you’re not alone. Feeling like you matter is as fundamental a need as food or water, yet it’s a need going unmet by many. Danielle sits down with journalist and author Jennifer Wallace, who spent over six years researching and interviewing everyday people about losing and regaining that sense of mattering. They discuss what it really means to matter, the role social media plays in the mattering crisis, and how to show up for your loved ones and make them valued.
Books Mentioned
Mattering by Jennifer Wallace
Never Enough by Jennifer Wallace
1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin
Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten
Choosing Civility by P. M. Forni
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Doorman by Chris Pavone
The Good Life by Robert Waldinger, M.D. and Marc Schulz, Ph.D
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bookmarked by Terese's Book Club is presented by Apple Books.
Welcome to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club. I'm your host,
Stanielle Robe, and this week we're talking about something fundamental,
something at the core of who we are, mattering. What
it means to mean something, to matter to someone, to
(00:23):
have value, and to serve a purpose. Today we're talking
with journalist and author Jennifer Wallace about her new nonfiction book, Mattering.
Jennifer spent six years interviewing people across different generations and
backgrounds to understand why feeling replaceable or overlooked or invisible
has become so common and what that tells us about
(00:46):
the growing loneliness of modern life and throughout it all.
Jennifer asked two questions that have been sitting with me
since we talked. What does it mean to feel like
you matter? And what happens to us when we don't?
So I want to ask you two questions as well.
Do you feel like you matter? And do the people
(01:07):
in your life know they matter to you? And yes,
it's February and it is almost Valentine's Day, so of
course thoughts about connection are in the air. And I
think this conversation invites us to think about connection in
a deeper, more lasting way, beyond romance and into the
everyday moments where belonging is built. So if you've ever
(01:27):
wondered whether you fit into the world or how to
help others feel like they belong, you are exactly in
the right place. Let's turn the page with Jennifer Wallace. Hi, Jennifer,
welcome to the club.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
So you are a two time author and your latest
book is called Mattering, and it's an exploration into how
we can feel like we matter and why it is
so important. And my first question for you is maybe
a deceptively simple one, what does it mean to matter?
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Oh, that's a great question. So mattering is a fundamental
human need that all of us have to feel valued
and to have a chance to add value to the world.
And this need is going on met and there are
lots of reasons why it's going on met today. But
what researchers will tell you is that when you don't
(02:24):
meet this need, you suffer. You feel lonely, anxious, depressed,
a sense of meaningless in your life, your relationships feel hollow.
When the need is met, you thrive, you engage, you contribute,
your relationships feel deep and nurturing. So it is a
critical human need that is going on met I would argue,
(02:46):
to some extent in every single person.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
I'm curious how we feel we matter in our own life?
Is it the stories that we tell ourselves?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Is it?
Speaker 1 (02:57):
If you're saying it's not our accomplishments to so much
of it's done from childhood.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
It does. But it doesn't mean if you didn't have
that feeling that you can't find that feeling. Again, Mattering
starts from the earliest of days, so when you are born,
your instincts are there to matter. So just to give you,
like a little nerd out for a minute, I'm mattering please. So.
Researchers who study it say, after the human drive for
(03:25):
food and shelter, it's the need to matter that drives
human behavior, for better or for worse. So when we
feel like we matter, we show up to the world
in positive ways. We want to connect with people and contribute.
When we are made to feel like we don't matter,
we can withdraw, become anxious, depressed. We might turn to
(03:45):
substances to try to alleviate that pain, or we might
lash out and anger, school shooters. I think about online attacks,
political extremes, you know, road rage. These are desperate attempts
by people to say, you know, I'll show you why matter.
So people will go to great lengths to meet this need,
(04:07):
even if it is in self destructive ways.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
This is really interesting because it mattering seems like such
a simple concept. Like you, it almost feels silly for
me to ask you to define it, And yet I'm
hearing you say that we are a culture that is
totally lacking this basic need. What are some of the
symptoms of a person or a culture, aside from the
(04:31):
actions that you just named, where mattering is undervalued or lost.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
I think it's at the root of our loneliness epidemic.
Our loneliness epidemic is not a mental health issue necessarily,
it's a social health issue. So the idea that we
don't feel like we matter to other people, that's what
makes us feel lonely. So you could be in a
relationship with someone, you could be in a family, you
could work in a workplace and feel terribly lonely, and
(05:00):
that is because you do not feel like you matter
there workplaces. It's going on met there's some the statistics
are really alarming. Seventy percent of people report being disengaged
at work.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Disengagement seventy percent is a really high number.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Really high number, and it's not only bad for companies,
right loss in productivity. Employees then leave and they go
find other jobs, so they have to replace them. But engagement,
in mattering terms is a protective coping strategy. So if
you are feeling like you don't matter at work, that's
very painful. So the way you cope with it is
(05:41):
you disengage. You say, well, I don't matter to you,
You're not going to matter to me.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
I'm sort of having a light bulb moment because for
the last few years on social media or like in
digital media like the Cut, we hear all these sort
of colloquialisms or jokes about quiet, quitting or disengaging, and
you're saying, this is at the root of it. That's fascinating.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Mattering researchers describe it as a meta need or an
umbrella term, so a need that is above all other needs,
so it encompasses things like belonging, connection, purpose, but mattering
goes deeper, so you can belong to a classroom, a family,
(06:26):
a workplace, the accounting department, and not feel like you
actually matter to the people there. So we talk so
much as a culture about belonging. Belonging is important, but
it doesn't go far enough. You can belong at the
table and not feel like you matter to the people
at that table. Mattering is really the missing need that
(06:48):
is going on.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Met I see this so often in religious institutions nowadays.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Well, that's part of the reason why we don't feel
like we matter. I mean, religion was not perfect, wasn't
a p to see it for everything, but it did
give us this sense of unconditional worth. All the major
religions have some element of you are worthy because you
are a child of God, when religion does not play
(07:17):
a role in your life. As a culture, especially here
in the US, we've replaced religion with capitalism. So instead
of saying you are unconditionally worthy, capitalism says you are
worthy when you contribute to the system. And so I
think it's why here as a culture, we do not
prize children, We do not prize the elderly, We do
not prize parents who stay at home, because these are
(07:40):
people who are not contributing to the capitalistic system. Or
we're sending messages. You can buy your mattering when I
go and I speak with young people on college campuses
and at their schools to talk about mattering, and I
say to them, the next time you are on your
phone and you're scrolling through Instagram, I want you to
(08:03):
notice the next time you're feeling like you're not enough,
You're not pretty enough, you're not fit enough, you're not
social enough. I want you to think who is profiting
off of making you feel like you're not enough? Because
there's someone there and it's this big revelation for them,
this idea. People are manipulating me into thinking I'm not enough,
(08:24):
that I don't matter for who I am inside, so
they could sell me a product, so I'll go and
buy their makeup, so I'll go and wear their clothes.
So what I'm trying to do with matter to me,
mattering is a way of reinforcing this idea that all
of us have unconditional worth.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
I think that's so beautiful, and I really agree. I
always feel like everybody has something really special about them
and something that is their purpose. So I love how
you're wording it. Do you remember the first time you
felt like you mattered.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
So I will say I was lucky to grow up
in a family and an extended family that made me
feel like I mattered. I think the first time I
felt like I mattered, though, really like in an adult sense,
was when I was in college and I was home
for a January break. It was like a long month
long break, and my grandmother was going through chemo. She
(09:22):
had stage four cancer, and my mother was working, and
so my mother said, would you drive your grandmother to
and from the chemo appointments? And at the time, I thought, Oh,
this is just you know, logistics that I'm just here
to get her there she couldn't drive, But I really
was like, wow, she's really dependent on me, Like I
(09:45):
am really contributing to her life. And so that was
the first time where I felt this sort of adult
sense of mattering that people were relying on me. That's
one of the important ingredients to mattering is feeling relied
and depended on.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Do you feel like the rise of technology and potentially
AI in our future really hurts humans mattering because what
I'm hearing from you is that a lot of it
is like feeling useful.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yes, So that's exactly right, And to be in community
with people. So I do think social media can play
a role if you are living in a rural area
and you don't have people around you who you feel
like can identify with you and build community with you.
(10:45):
I think so many people find solace in online communities
and where they feel a sense of being known and
seen for who they are. So I don't think tech
and social media are all bad. What I think tech
has done, though, is you know, in Silicon Valley they
talk a lot about creating a frictionless experience. So a
(11:09):
frictionless experience is with the click of a button, you
can order your Amazon package and have it delivered to
your door. The click of a button, you can order
your Uber Eats and have it delivered to your door,
and you don't have to interact with people ever. And
what it has done is I think it has recalibrated
our expectations in life. That we expect life to be frictionless,
(11:33):
that we expect our relationships to be frictionless, but life
doesn't work like that, and deep nourishing relationships are not frictionless.
Humans are friction creators. And what happens is when you
when you have this unrealistic expectation that relationships should always
(11:54):
be easy. I think you isolate yourself. We all as humans,
we create this social proof that we matter, and we
can only get that social proof from other people. So
I do think to the extent that that tech makes
us think life should be frictionless and isolates us. That
is how our mattering erodes.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
One of the things I love about your book, Jennifer,
the stories from the individual people. And I know you're
a journalist, so you are quite literally a master and
a pro at collecting stories. But I am really curious
what your research process was like. How did you find
all these people?
Speaker 2 (12:31):
It is a long and exhaustive research process. So for
this book, I conducted an international survey of thousands of
people and collected stories, collected moments when they felt like
they didn't matter, moments when they felt like they did.
And then what I started doing was calling researchers who
have been studying mattering since the eighties and getting ingredients
(12:54):
and then trying to find so for example, the start
of one chapter are firefighters, because I was thinking to myself,
who are the people who have the most purposeful jobs? Right,
It's got to be first responders, firefighters, they literally risk
their lives to save other people. And then I started
(13:15):
researching about firefighters and saw that they were burning out,
that they were leaving. Retention was becoming an issue. They
were dying by suicide more than they were on the job.
And so then I started, as I did with my
first book, going in search of who are the people
who are trying to solve for this? And I found
(13:37):
I through maybe twenty phone calls, I found a fire
department in North Charleston, South Carolina, with a firefighter who
was doing something about the disengagement that's being seen nationally.
So I don't know if you know this, but firefighters
are often the first to arrive at the scene of
a medical emergency or a car accident, so that they
don't just fight fires. And then after they they stabilize
(14:01):
the person or pull them out of a burning car,
ems takes over and brings the person to the hospital.
The firefighters never find out what happened next. Did their
actions make a difference. So time after time, doing these
heroic efforts and never knowing if it made an impact
was causing them to feel disengaged. They didn't know if
(14:22):
they mattered, And so this fire chief created a system
to change that. He tracked the outcomes of rescues so
firefighters could know when their actions had saved a life
or ease someone's suffering because he knew that doing meaningful
and purposeful work wasn't enough. You need to know your
work makes a difference. You need to know you matter.
(14:43):
And that example, while most of us, most of my
readers are not going to be first responders or firefighters,
we can learn from that story. We can learn that
if you are a caregiver doing deeply purposeful work raising
your children or caring for an elderly f member, but
you feel disconnected from your impact, if you don't know
(15:04):
that you are making a difference, you can burn out.
And so there are ways we can The way I
put it in the book is connect to our own impact.
So we don't even need to rely on a boss
to create a system. We can create these systems for ourselves.
One woman I interviewed who works as a consultant, has
(15:25):
an impact file on her Google Docs where she saves
thank you notes, thank you texts. When her work goes
in the newspaper, she will cut it out and frame
it like a kind of trophy wall. So she is
mindful about her impact, and so whenever she is feeling
burnt out or feeling like my efforts aren't making a difference,
(15:46):
she goes back to that impact file. We can all
do that in our lives. We can all create these
simple impact files. And I've started doing it. Someone sent
me flowers and wrote the most beautiful note. That's part
of my impact file. My children on Mother's Day write
me these beautiful cards. Those are in my impact files.
So whenever I am feeling like what I am doing
(16:07):
is not enough, I connect with my impact. And we
can do that. And we can do that for each other.
I mean that's the other thing, right, We can do
it for ourselves, but we can also do it for
each other. A simple text saying if it wasn't for you,
I wouldn't have had the courage to go out for
that big job. Thank you for believing in me when
I couldn't even believe in myself. Right, we can close
(16:28):
the loops. Somebody gives you a great piece of advice,
we can circle back and say I took that advice
and guess what, it worked. Thank you so much. We
just we are going through life because we have so
many demands on our time. We are enduring so much
input and so much output demanded of us that many
(16:50):
of us are going through life on a kind of autopilot,
and that can really disconnect us from the impact that
we have on the world around us. So what mattering
does when you really start to understand mattering is it
forces you to be more awake in how you go
through life, to be more mindful. It's really a wonderful
(17:12):
way to go through life to look for mattering and
to unlock the mattering and the people around you. We
all have this human need that must be met and
it is going under met. Yes, So if you can
be the person do that to you know, I've started
this challenge for myself and this is sort of I
wouldn't even call it my New Year's resolution, it's kind
(17:32):
of my life resolution. Is to imagine everyone I meet,
my family, strangers I meet on the street, my colleagues
wearing a sign around their necks saying tell me do
I matter? We can answer that with eye contact, smiling,
providing warmth, telling people why they make a difference.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
The question you just shared is very similar to a
big question you ask these people that you interview in
the book, which is do you feel like you matter?
What was one of the most surprising answers you received.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
I mean, what was surprised me was overwhelmingly how many
people felt like they didn't matter anymore. It's so sad.
And what I realized is many of those people were
going through painful life transitions. So if they were parents
now facing an empty nest, or people relocating or changing jobs,
(18:29):
or getting fired or breaking up with somebody that they loved,
or grieving the death of a loved one, these are
all moments. These transitions can shake our sense of mattering
to its core. What I wish I had known when
I was in my twenties and thirties was how life
transitions can rattle you. We tend to really personalize the
(18:53):
experiences that we have in our life. So I'm thinking
about when I was in my twenties in college and
moving to New York and leaving behind my very close friendships,
leaving behind a campus where I really felt like I
mattered to come to New York, which I loved, but
at the time, really my sense of mattering. I was
(19:14):
new to my job. I certainly wasn't adding value because
I was barely figuring out how to do my work.
I didn't know my neighbors, they didn't really want to
know me, and I felt really lonely. And I used
to personalize it. I used to think something must be
wrong with me. And what I wish I had known
was that it's not personal that transitions. This is what
(19:37):
they do. They disrupt your sense of mattering and they
forced you to find a new way to matter again.
I'll tell you one of the things that I did
which was really helpful to me, and what the research
bears out, is that when you are going through a
painful life transition, the first step is to realize that
you are not alone. That others have gone through the
(20:00):
these painful life transitions and come out the other side.
So if you are going through one of these, you
can what I did in my twenties, and I didn't
know I was doing this. I would go every Saturday
morning to the Barnes and Noble near my house and
I would spend three hours reading nonfiction books, reading magazines.
I almost treated it like a library, which is not
(20:20):
very nice.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
But I actually did the very same thing when I
moved to La Right.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Like, it's not great, but I would sit there and
I would just read other people's stories. Read how so
I would look for role models. And research finds that
role models when you are going through a hard transition,
that is a great way of figuring out one that
you're not alone, and two other how other people strategically
(20:46):
have come out the other side. The other thing you
can do is to harness the power of invitation. So
there was a woman that I interviewed in my book
who was going through a painful divorce, and she was
talking about how her couple friends stop inviting her to
dinner because she was like a fifth wheel. And so
(21:07):
she was saying this to her therapist, and her therapist said, well,
then you start hosting dinner parties and inviting them. So,
if you are going through a transition, if your sense
of mattering has taken a hit, harness the power of invitation,
either issuing an invitation or making a point to accept
invitations even when your life does not feel like it's
(21:29):
in order. There's research that I love called the Beautiful
mess Effect. It shows that we tend to have this
false belief that we need to get our lives in
order and kind of look perfect from the outside. To
be worthy of support, to be worthy of inviting people
into our lives. But it's actually the messiness of our
lives that signal warmth and authenticity, and it's what brings
(21:55):
people closer to us. In my mind, when I think
about the beautiful mess effect, I think about if you've
ever tried to put a sticky, like a little light
sticker on a lacquered surface. It will stick, but it
will slide off because there's nothing to grip. So if
you think about your life and if you are presenting
yourself as perfect, there's nothing for people to hold on too.
(22:19):
There's nothing sticky there. So it's actually in the grinniness
of our lives. It's the messiness of our lives. Not saying,
reveal all your mess but pockets of your messiness. Invite
people in, invite them in to be a support for you,
to help you through it.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Before we go to break, I want to ask what
you've bookmarked this week? It can be a fun quote,
something you've sent a girlfriend, a book that is on
your TVR list. What have you bookmarked this week?
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Jennifer So, I have a few books on my to
be read list, but one of them is Andrew Ross
Sorkins nineteen twenty nine, which is a on fiction book
talking about the crash of nineteen twenty nine. And I
will tell you it is a great read.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
I'm excited about that. I actually put that on my
TVR list too for the holiday season. It's good, Okay.
I want to get into how we can matter not
(23:27):
just to ourselves, but how we feel like we matter
in the world and matter to other people. Can we
kind of go section BI section how do we create
a house and a family where we feel like we matter?
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Yeah? So I would say as a parent, or even
if you don't have children, it's having people in your life,
in your immediate circle that prioritize you and you prioritize them.
Mattering is the sense, particularly in close relationships, that you
matter more than that You matter more than my phone,
(24:02):
you matter more than my work email. You matter. So
you don't have to prioritize them every minute of every day.
But it is noticing and tuning into them and noticing
when they need that mattering feeling, tuning in and delivering
it wonderful.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
And that goes. That's across the board, whether that's at
home or you're saying that is for home and then
work is something separate, I.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Would say one of the things as a parent, what
I've come to realize in researching on mattering is that
parents play a very important role in sending our children
the message that they matter no matter what. So, sending
the signal to our kids that they are not their successes,
(24:46):
they are not their failures, that they're mattering is fully
there no matter what. So a mother that I interviewed
for the book, when her children would maybe get rejected
by a friend, or wouldn't make the a team, or
would bomb a test, and would feel like they didn't matter,
that their worth was somehow less because they didn't perform,
(25:10):
she would reach into her wallet and she would grab
a bill. She would say to our kids, do you
want this money? How much is it worth? And they
would say it's worth twenty dollars. Yes, I'd love it,
and she'd say, okay, hang on a minute. She would
wrinkle it up, she would dunk it in a glass
of water, dirty it with her shoe, and then she
would hold up a soggy, dirty, wrinkled bill and she
(25:30):
would say, how much is it worth? Now? Do you
still want this money? Like this bill? Your worth doesn't
change whether you've been knocked down, rejected, whether you feel
crumpled up or soggy inside. Your worth is your worth,
no matter what. I love that anecdote, right, that is
a message that we could give to our friends, to
(25:52):
our spouses, to our children. You are worthy no matter what.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Jennifer, I'm taking that one with me. That's so good.
One of my favorite chapters in your book was about cornermen,
and actually I was going to explain them, but why
don't Can you explain what a cornerman is?
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Sure, so, a cornerman, I'm not a big boxing fan,
but a cornerman is the person in the corner that
supports a boxer through their training, through the tournament, through
the match. They are able to see blind spots, they
are able to deliver tough love. They are there in
(26:29):
the corner experiencing that fight right along with the boxer.
And so what I write about is how important it
is not just to invite cornermen into our life, to
invest in us, but to be a corner man for
other people. That's something that you know we are wired
to want to invest, to want to create these really
(26:52):
strong relationships with other people. But sometimes things like envy
or competition can get in the way of being a
corner If you are someone who may be experiencing a
lot of envy, you don't have to judge yourself for
being envious. You don't have to judge yourself. We all
evolve to feel envy for healthy, adaptive reasons. You don't
(27:12):
have to judge yourself, but you have to hold yourself
accountable for how you act on that envy. So when
those feelings happen, you can either take the malicious envy route,
which is cutting somebody down or gossiping about someone being
a mean girl so you feel better by comparison, or
you can take the benign, healthy route, which is looking
at them as a source of inspiration. You could go
(27:34):
even a step further and be a cornerman. Look at them,
say to them, I am so impressed with what you
have done. I would love to help you take it
even further. That is an idea that is often beaten
out of us in our zero sum culture, but that's
not how we are wired. We are wired to support
(27:55):
one another. We are wired to want to be there
to hold each other up. So I am here to
say say to you be countercultural. Don't listen to a
society that tells you it's a zero sum game that
somebody else's win is your loss. It is not true.
There is enough joy, there is enough accomplishment and success
to go around.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
So I've found, and this is a personal thing, but
my only issue ever in friendship since I was young
was envy. And I've felt that you really can't be
friends with someone that has any sort of envy for you,
or your life or anything. I always hear Oprah talk
(28:36):
about this you too, you know, like, what is the
difference between that sort of envy and not wanting a
corner man who has that versus somebody who's more benign.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
So what I will say is that if there are
people in your life who are really struggling with the
malicious kind of envy, who maybe don't want the best
for you, I think the way to think about them
is with compassion. All humans want to do well, All
humans want to be good people. We are wired to
(29:09):
want to be good people. So if you have someone
in your life who is really struggling with envy, have
compassion for them, Realize that they don't have the tools
to cope with their envy. And healthy ways. You don't
need to let them close into your life. You can
have them at a distance. I think it would be
very hard to be friends with someone who you thought
(29:31):
didn't want the best for you, So I don't think
you need to necessarily cut them out of your life,
but they cannot be a corner man. A cornerman is
somebody who believes in you and wants everything for you.
We know what investment does to us. We know how
it fills us up and helps us reach for higher goals.
It makes us feel good. But actually investing in other
(29:53):
people allows for what researchers call ego extension, meaning that
your ego as a person. If you're cornerman, your ego
extends to include the successes of the people you support.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
I tell my kids this all the time. Literally, ninety
percent of the joy in my life is the joy
I get from my friends and their successes and their joys.
This is an untapped joy fountain that is just waiting
for you. What a thrill to be able to enjoy
the joy and the success of your friends. It just
(30:28):
makes your life better.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
I totally agree, And if you're comfortable, I do want
to name one of your corner men, because I think
it's so fun your besties with Aa Garten, who you've
called her one of the fairy godmothers of your newest book,
and a quote from her is actually on the front cover.
I need to ask you what the best meal is
that you've ever shared with her?
Speaker 2 (30:50):
She's amazing. I will tell you that I am not
as lucky as Jeffrey, but she will often call me
over because she's testing recipes, and I know, isn't that amazing?
So it's amazing, and I will try her. I mean
even her. She's such a really a scientist. I mean
(31:12):
she can taste things that I can't. I mean everything
she makes is delicious. Wo for her skillet chicken is amazing.
It is so good. So that is sort of a
comfort food for me. But she everything she makes is delicious.
There's nothing I've ever had that Aina has made that
hasn't been amazing.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Has she given you advice? Have you given her advice?
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Oh? My gosh, she gives me so much great advice.
It's funny because one of the pieces of advice she
gave me was a piece of advice she got from
Liza Minelli, which is the title of her memoir, which
is to be ready when the luck happens. That success
is about hard work, it's also about luck. A lot
(31:57):
of it is out of your control. But to say
yourself up so that you are ready when your idea,
when your business, whatever it is, hits, be ready for
the luck to happen.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Love that. There's another chapter of your book that specifically
focuses on mattering at work, which we've touched on a
little bit. I'm really curious what the research says. How
can bosses and managers and team leaders bring a sense
of mattering to the workplace.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Yes, and it's so important that they do. I mean,
when you think about we spend a third of our
lives in the workplace. If we don't feel like we
matter at work, it makes it so much harder to
feel like we matter overall. So I have this framework
that I've developed called Said. It's the Said framework Said,
(32:47):
which stands for the four major ingredients of mattering, significance, appreciation, invested, in,
depended on. So all of those elements are how you
make your colleagues feel like they matter significant. It's not
about throwing them a party. It's in the moments. It
is remembering small details about them, if their mother is
(33:09):
having surgery, marking it in your calendar and going back
to it a week later and saying, how did your
mom do with the surgery. So significance is the idea
that I play a significant role in your mind, that
I am prioritized in your mind, just these little moments appreciated.
Is the difference between saying to a colleague, who is
(33:30):
who is you know, always great at organizing happy hours?
You might say one way of appreciating your colleague would
be to say thank you for always, you know, hosting
these these cocktail hours. They're so fun. But that's not
a way to feed the sense of mattering. A better
way to feed that is to say to your colleague,
(33:50):
thank you for being the kind of colleague who knows
what it takes to build community. It's because of you
that we are so close as a department. Something so specific,
specific about the doer. So don't just thank someone for
the deed for organizing, thank them for being the doer,
the person who gets people together, who builds community. So
(34:11):
nice invested and we talked about it's letting people know
that their goals matter to you. It is providing feedback
in a way that makes people believe you are invested
in them, even your negative feedback, positioning it as I
believe in you. I know you can do this, trusting
them to deliver. And then the last thing is depending
(34:32):
on them, relying on them, the idea that the office
wouldn't be the same without them. So many people feel invisible, interchangeable.
Now AI is coming on the scene. Is that going
to make us replaceable? Let people know that you depend
on them, you rely on them, and that you appreciate
that you can depend on them, that they always come
(34:52):
through for you.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
One of the phrases that I'm really going to take
with me from your book is mattering our and it
combines a few things. One is showing up physically to
a third space. I think about showing up all the time.
I think we're in a lack in our culture and
I'm not sure why. Maybe it is mattering and you
(35:16):
could probably shed some light on that. But the way
you define a mattering architect also touches on how we
show up, and it's about building out and protecting emotional space.
How can we signal to other people that we're wanting
to have these deep connections and deeper conversations.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
So that is such a great question. And what I
have found is it takes real intentionality that you don't
necessarily come out to someone and say I want to
go deeper with you, right, Instead, you create the conditions
where that deepness can take hold. So a book group, right,
that is a place where people gather regularly. You prioritize
(35:56):
each other to show up. So it's requiring showing up,
being and then creating the conditions for those conversations to unwind.
I belong to a group where once a month we
read an article like some in depth article, and we
sit in each other's kitchens over lunch and we talk
about the article. But then it inevitably spills out into life,
(36:17):
what it is to be in the messy middle, what
it's like to juggle workplace demands with raising children. And
so it's creating the scaffolding for those relationships to unfold.
So it takes intention, deliberate time carving it out in
your calendar to let someone know they matter to you.
You are carving out the time that says you are
(36:39):
a priority to me.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
So beautiful, I love that you do that. What a
fun idea. Who picks the article?
Speaker 2 (36:45):
It wasn't. My idea was. And what was so interesting
about this is that it's friends of friends, so it's
not even like a group of close friends. And whoever's
hosting picks the article. And then we sit and I
don't cook, so I order in, but some people cook
a delicious meal. And there's something so intimate about sitting
in each other's kitchens. Yeah, there's something really old fashioned
(37:06):
and fabulous about it. And the food and the article
create that kind of scaffolding.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
I love the ritual of it. It's very cool. We're
coming to the end of the interview, and I want
to actually start with the opening of your book because
there's a quote that hit me so hard. It's so beautiful.
It's a Mary Oliver quote and she writes, I don't
want to end up having simply visited this world. How
(37:34):
does that quote connect to mattering?
Speaker 2 (37:37):
So what I've come to believe is as a human
being on this earth, we have a responsibility to matter,
to matter to the people around us, to add positive value.
And so that quote, to me is a reminder that
we are not bystanders, We are not people just going
through the motions we have a social response cibility to
(38:01):
matter here and so that to me, I mean some
people say they just want to be happy. I want
more than just to be happy. I want to know
that what I do is making a difference. I want
to know that the people around me feel valued. I
want to surround myself with people who make me feel
like I matter. And so to me, that mattering has
become the north star. And I think people are often
(38:25):
searching for happiness, searching for happiness in their New Year's resolutions.
If only I lost the ten pounds, or if only
I did this, And I want you to if you
are in that moment, I want you to think that
is you already matter. You already matter, And even if
you feel like you don't matter, you are one action
(38:46):
and one decision away from mattering again. And that is
sending a text to someone telling them if it wasn't
for them. It's walking out your front door and thanking
the person at the pharmacy who always greet you with
a smile and provides such warmth and telling them my
days have been hard, but I will tell you you
(39:06):
are such a positive light in this world. We have
a responsibility to matter, to the world, to our legacy,
to future generations, to this earth. We have a responsibility
to matter, and we have agency we can matter in
this world.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
Okay, we're going to do something called speed read, which
is I'm going to put sixty seconds on the clock
and see how many rapid fire literary questions we can
get through. Are you ready?
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Let's do it?
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Three?
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Two one? What is a self help book trope that
you would ban forever?
Speaker 2 (39:44):
Self optimization, self optimizing your time? Who you are? I'm
so tired of the self help books. We need to
be in relationship with each other. That's how we matter.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
So agree, Which one would you defend with your life?
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Any book that encourages relatelationships and deeper connection to help
protect our social health, which we don't talk enough about.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
What's a book that you wish you had written?
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Oh, my gosh, so many books. Actually. Choosing Civility is
a book I wish i'd written. It's a tiny, tiny
book by a professor PM I don't know how to
say his last name, Fiorni, and just little rules of
civility in everyday life.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
What's a book that you wish you could read again
for the first time?
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Crime and Punishment. That was the book that made me
understand what psychology was and made me want to write
about what I write about today.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
I'm putting that on my TBR list.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Who is your Desert Island author? Who are you reading
for the rest of your life?
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Maybe my very good friend Chris Pavoni, who writes really engaging,
really smart thrillers.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
You walk into a bookstore and you have ten minutes.
Where are you headed? First?
Speaker 2 (40:54):
General nonfiction new release?
Speaker 1 (40:57):
What's a book that you gift most often?
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Oh? I give so many different books, recently The Good Life,
which is about a study done at Harvard the longest
study ever conducted of human beings, The Good Life.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
And lastly, what would your memoir be called?
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Too Much? The part two from never Enough to too Much?
Speaker 1 (41:18):
I know, no, Jennifer, you matter, You're not too much?
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Okay? Clattering? It would be about mattering.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Yeah, thank you so much. I'm going to be thinking
about what you shared today for a really long time.
I so appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
Thank you for this great conversation.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
If you want a little bit more from us, come
hang with us on socials. We're at Reese's Book Club
on Instagram, serving up books, Vibes and behind the scenes
magic and I'm Danielle Robe, ro b a y come
say hi and DM me and if you want to
go nineties on us, you can call us. Okay, so
our phone line is open, So call us now at
(42:01):
five zero one two nine one three three seven nine.
That's five zero one two nine one three three seven nine.
Share your literary hot takes, your book recommendations, ooh, please
share those and questions about the monthly pick, or just
let us know what you think about the episode you
just heard. And who knows, you might just hear yourself
in our next episode, So don't be shy. Give us
(42:24):
a ring, and of course, make sure to follow Bookmarked
by Reese's book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your shows. Until then, see you
in the next chapter. Bookmarked is a production of Hello,
Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts. It's executive produced by Reese Witherspoon
and me Danielle Robe. Production is by Acast Creative Studios.
(42:46):
Our producers are Matty Foley, Brittany Martinez, and Sarah Schleid.
Our production assistant is Avery Loftis, Jenny Kaplan and Emily
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Hello Sunshine. Olga Kaminwa, Sarah Kernerman, Kristin Parla, and Ashley
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(43:09):
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Bookmarked by Terese's Book Club is presented by Apple Books.
Welcome to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club. I'm your host,
Stanielle Robe, and this week we're talking about something fundamental,
something at the core of who we are, mattering. What
it means to mean something, to matter to someone, to
(00:23):
have value, and to serve a purpose. Today we're talking
with journalist and author Jennifer Wallace about her new nonfiction book, Mattering.
Jennifer spent six years interviewing people across different generations and
backgrounds to understand why feeling replaceable or overlooked or invisible
has become so common and what that tells us about
(00:46):
the growing loneliness of modern life and throughout it all.
Jennifer asked two questions that have been sitting with me
since we talked. What does it mean to feel like
you matter? And what happens to us when we don't?
So I want to ask you two questions as well.
Do you feel like you matter? And do the people
(01:07):
in your life know they matter to you? And yes,
it's February and it is almost Valentine's Day, so of
course thoughts about connection are in the air. And I
think this conversation invites us to think about connection in
a deeper, more lasting way, beyond romance and into the
everyday moments where belonging is built. So if you've ever
(01:27):
wondered whether you fit into the world or how to
help others feel like they belong, you are exactly in
the right place. Let's turn the page with Jennifer Wallace. Hi, Jennifer,
welcome to the club.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
So you are a two time author and your latest
book is called Mattering, and it's an exploration into how
we can feel like we matter and why it is
so important. And my first question for you is maybe
a deceptively simple one, what does it mean to matter?
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Oh, that's a great question. So mattering is a fundamental
human need that all of us have to feel valued
and to have a chance to add value to the world.
And this need is going on met and there are
lots of reasons why it's going on met today. But
what researchers will tell you is that when you don't
(02:24):
meet this need, you suffer. You feel lonely, anxious, depressed,
a sense of meaningless in your life, your relationships feel hollow.
When the need is met, you thrive, you engage, you contribute,
your relationships feel deep and nurturing. So it is a
critical human need that is going on met I would argue,
(02:46):
to some extent in every single person.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
I'm curious how we feel we matter in our own life?
Is it the stories that we tell ourselves?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Is it?
Speaker 1 (02:57):
If you're saying it's not our accomplishments to so much
of it's done from childhood.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
It does. But it doesn't mean if you didn't have
that feeling that you can't find that feeling. Again, Mattering
starts from the earliest of days, so when you are born,
your instincts are there to matter. So just to give you,
like a little nerd out for a minute, I'm mattering please. So.
Researchers who study it say, after the human drive for
(03:25):
food and shelter, it's the need to matter that drives
human behavior, for better or for worse. So when we
feel like we matter, we show up to the world
in positive ways. We want to connect with people and contribute.
When we are made to feel like we don't matter,
we can withdraw, become anxious, depressed. We might turn to
(03:45):
substances to try to alleviate that pain, or we might
lash out and anger, school shooters. I think about online attacks,
political extremes, you know, road rage. These are desperate attempts
by people to say, you know, I'll show you why matter.
So people will go to great lengths to meet this need,
(04:07):
even if it is in self destructive ways.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
This is really interesting because it mattering seems like such
a simple concept. Like you, it almost feels silly for
me to ask you to define it, And yet I'm
hearing you say that we are a culture that is
totally lacking this basic need. What are some of the
symptoms of a person or a culture, aside from the
(04:31):
actions that you just named, where mattering is undervalued or lost.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
I think it's at the root of our loneliness epidemic.
Our loneliness epidemic is not a mental health issue necessarily,
it's a social health issue. So the idea that we
don't feel like we matter to other people, that's what
makes us feel lonely. So you could be in a
relationship with someone, you could be in a family, you
could work in a workplace and feel terribly lonely, and
(05:00):
that is because you do not feel like you matter
there workplaces. It's going on met there's some the statistics
are really alarming. Seventy percent of people report being disengaged
at work.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Disengagement seventy percent is a really high number.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Really high number, and it's not only bad for companies,
right loss in productivity. Employees then leave and they go
find other jobs, so they have to replace them. But engagement,
in mattering terms is a protective coping strategy. So if
you are feeling like you don't matter at work, that's
very painful. So the way you cope with it is
(05:41):
you disengage. You say, well, I don't matter to you,
You're not going to matter to me.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
I'm sort of having a light bulb moment because for
the last few years on social media or like in
digital media like the Cut, we hear all these sort
of colloquialisms or jokes about quiet, quitting or disengaging, and
you're saying, this is at the root of it. That's fascinating.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Mattering researchers describe it as a meta need or an
umbrella term, so a need that is above all other needs,
so it encompasses things like belonging, connection, purpose, but mattering
goes deeper, so you can belong to a classroom, a family,
(06:26):
a workplace, the accounting department, and not feel like you
actually matter to the people there. So we talk so
much as a culture about belonging. Belonging is important, but
it doesn't go far enough. You can belong at the
table and not feel like you matter to the people
at that table. Mattering is really the missing need that
(06:48):
is going on.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Met I see this so often in religious institutions nowadays.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Well, that's part of the reason why we don't feel
like we matter. I mean, religion was not perfect, wasn't
a p to see it for everything, but it did
give us this sense of unconditional worth. All the major
religions have some element of you are worthy because you
are a child of God, when religion does not play
(07:17):
a role in your life. As a culture, especially here
in the US, we've replaced religion with capitalism. So instead
of saying you are unconditionally worthy, capitalism says you are
worthy when you contribute to the system. And so I
think it's why here as a culture, we do not
prize children, We do not prize the elderly, We do
not prize parents who stay at home, because these are
(07:40):
people who are not contributing to the capitalistic system. Or
we're sending messages. You can buy your mattering when I
go and I speak with young people on college campuses
and at their schools to talk about mattering, and I
say to them, the next time you are on your
phone and you're scrolling through Instagram, I want you to
(08:03):
notice the next time you're feeling like you're not enough,
You're not pretty enough, you're not fit enough, you're not
social enough. I want you to think who is profiting
off of making you feel like you're not enough? Because
there's someone there and it's this big revelation for them,
this idea. People are manipulating me into thinking I'm not enough,
(08:24):
that I don't matter for who I am inside, so
they could sell me a product, so I'll go and
buy their makeup, so I'll go and wear their clothes.
So what I'm trying to do with matter to me,
mattering is a way of reinforcing this idea that all
of us have unconditional worth.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
I think that's so beautiful, and I really agree. I
always feel like everybody has something really special about them
and something that is their purpose. So I love how
you're wording it. Do you remember the first time you
felt like you mattered.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
So I will say I was lucky to grow up
in a family and an extended family that made me
feel like I mattered. I think the first time I
felt like I mattered, though, really like in an adult sense,
was when I was in college and I was home
for a January break. It was like a long month
long break, and my grandmother was going through chemo. She
(09:22):
had stage four cancer, and my mother was working, and
so my mother said, would you drive your grandmother to
and from the chemo appointments? And at the time, I thought, Oh,
this is just you know, logistics that I'm just here
to get her there she couldn't drive, But I really
was like, wow, she's really dependent on me, Like I
(09:45):
am really contributing to her life. And so that was
the first time where I felt this sort of adult
sense of mattering that people were relying on me. That's
one of the important ingredients to mattering is feeling relied
and depended on.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Do you feel like the rise of technology and potentially
AI in our future really hurts humans mattering because what
I'm hearing from you is that a lot of it
is like feeling useful.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yes, So that's exactly right, And to be in community
with people. So I do think social media can play
a role if you are living in a rural area
and you don't have people around you who you feel
like can identify with you and build community with you.
(10:45):
I think so many people find solace in online communities
and where they feel a sense of being known and
seen for who they are. So I don't think tech
and social media are all bad. What I think tech
has done, though, is you know, in Silicon Valley they
talk a lot about creating a frictionless experience. So a
(11:09):
frictionless experience is with the click of a button, you
can order your Amazon package and have it delivered to
your door. The click of a button, you can order
your Uber Eats and have it delivered to your door,
and you don't have to interact with people ever. And
what it has done is I think it has recalibrated
our expectations in life. That we expect life to be frictionless,
(11:33):
that we expect our relationships to be frictionless, but life
doesn't work like that, and deep nourishing relationships are not frictionless.
Humans are friction creators. And what happens is when you
when you have this unrealistic expectation that relationships should always
(11:54):
be easy. I think you isolate yourself. We all as humans,
we create this social proof that we matter, and we
can only get that social proof from other people. So
I do think to the extent that that tech makes
us think life should be frictionless and isolates us. That
is how our mattering erodes.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
One of the things I love about your book, Jennifer,
the stories from the individual people. And I know you're
a journalist, so you are quite literally a master and
a pro at collecting stories. But I am really curious
what your research process was like. How did you find
all these people?
Speaker 2 (12:31):
It is a long and exhaustive research process. So for
this book, I conducted an international survey of thousands of
people and collected stories, collected moments when they felt like
they didn't matter, moments when they felt like they did.
And then what I started doing was calling researchers who
have been studying mattering since the eighties and getting ingredients
(12:54):
and then trying to find so for example, the start
of one chapter are firefighters, because I was thinking to myself,
who are the people who have the most purposeful jobs? Right,
It's got to be first responders, firefighters, they literally risk
their lives to save other people. And then I started
(13:15):
researching about firefighters and saw that they were burning out,
that they were leaving. Retention was becoming an issue. They
were dying by suicide more than they were on the job.
And so then I started, as I did with my
first book, going in search of who are the people
who are trying to solve for this? And I found
(13:37):
I through maybe twenty phone calls, I found a fire
department in North Charleston, South Carolina, with a firefighter who
was doing something about the disengagement that's being seen nationally.
So I don't know if you know this, but firefighters
are often the first to arrive at the scene of
a medical emergency or a car accident, so that they
don't just fight fires. And then after they they stabilize
(14:01):
the person or pull them out of a burning car,
ems takes over and brings the person to the hospital.
The firefighters never find out what happened next. Did their
actions make a difference. So time after time, doing these
heroic efforts and never knowing if it made an impact
was causing them to feel disengaged. They didn't know if
(14:22):
they mattered, And so this fire chief created a system
to change that. He tracked the outcomes of rescues so
firefighters could know when their actions had saved a life
or ease someone's suffering because he knew that doing meaningful
and purposeful work wasn't enough. You need to know your
work makes a difference. You need to know you matter.
(14:43):
And that example, while most of us, most of my
readers are not going to be first responders or firefighters,
we can learn from that story. We can learn that
if you are a caregiver doing deeply purposeful work raising
your children or caring for an elderly f member, but
you feel disconnected from your impact, if you don't know
(15:04):
that you are making a difference, you can burn out.
And so there are ways we can The way I
put it in the book is connect to our own impact.
So we don't even need to rely on a boss
to create a system. We can create these systems for ourselves.
One woman I interviewed who works as a consultant, has
(15:25):
an impact file on her Google Docs where she saves
thank you notes, thank you texts. When her work goes
in the newspaper, she will cut it out and frame
it like a kind of trophy wall. So she is
mindful about her impact, and so whenever she is feeling
burnt out or feeling like my efforts aren't making a difference,
(15:46):
she goes back to that impact file. We can all
do that in our lives. We can all create these
simple impact files. And I've started doing it. Someone sent
me flowers and wrote the most beautiful note. That's part
of my impact file. My children on Mother's Day write
me these beautiful cards. Those are in my impact files.
So whenever I am feeling like what I am doing
(16:07):
is not enough, I connect with my impact. And we
can do that. And we can do that for each other.
I mean that's the other thing, right, We can do
it for ourselves, but we can also do it for
each other. A simple text saying if it wasn't for you,
I wouldn't have had the courage to go out for
that big job. Thank you for believing in me when
I couldn't even believe in myself. Right, we can close
(16:28):
the loops. Somebody gives you a great piece of advice,
we can circle back and say I took that advice
and guess what, it worked. Thank you so much. We
just we are going through life because we have so
many demands on our time. We are enduring so much
input and so much output demanded of us that many
(16:50):
of us are going through life on a kind of autopilot,
and that can really disconnect us from the impact that
we have on the world around us. So what mattering
does when you really start to understand mattering is it
forces you to be more awake in how you go
through life, to be more mindful. It's really a wonderful
(17:12):
way to go through life to look for mattering and
to unlock the mattering and the people around you. We
all have this human need that must be met and
it is going under met. Yes, So if you can
be the person do that to you know, I've started
this challenge for myself and this is sort of I
wouldn't even call it my New Year's resolution, it's kind
(17:32):
of my life resolution. Is to imagine everyone I meet,
my family, strangers I meet on the street, my colleagues
wearing a sign around their necks saying tell me do
I matter? We can answer that with eye contact, smiling,
providing warmth, telling people why they make a difference.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
The question you just shared is very similar to a
big question you ask these people that you interview in
the book, which is do you feel like you matter?
What was one of the most surprising answers you received.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
I mean, what was surprised me was overwhelmingly how many
people felt like they didn't matter anymore. It's so sad.
And what I realized is many of those people were
going through painful life transitions. So if they were parents
now facing an empty nest, or people relocating or changing jobs,
(18:29):
or getting fired or breaking up with somebody that they loved,
or grieving the death of a loved one, these are
all moments. These transitions can shake our sense of mattering
to its core. What I wish I had known when
I was in my twenties and thirties was how life
transitions can rattle you. We tend to really personalize the
(18:53):
experiences that we have in our life. So I'm thinking
about when I was in my twenties in college and
moving to New York and leaving behind my very close friendships,
leaving behind a campus where I really felt like I
mattered to come to New York, which I loved, but
at the time, really my sense of mattering. I was
(19:14):
new to my job. I certainly wasn't adding value because
I was barely figuring out how to do my work.
I didn't know my neighbors, they didn't really want to
know me, and I felt really lonely. And I used
to personalize it. I used to think something must be
wrong with me. And what I wish I had known
was that it's not personal that transitions. This is what
(19:37):
they do. They disrupt your sense of mattering and they
forced you to find a new way to matter again.
I'll tell you one of the things that I did
which was really helpful to me, and what the research
bears out, is that when you are going through a
painful life transition, the first step is to realize that
you are not alone. That others have gone through the
(20:00):
these painful life transitions and come out the other side.
So if you are going through one of these, you
can what I did in my twenties, and I didn't
know I was doing this. I would go every Saturday
morning to the Barnes and Noble near my house and
I would spend three hours reading nonfiction books, reading magazines.
I almost treated it like a library, which is not
(20:20):
very nice.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
But I actually did the very same thing when I
moved to La Right.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Like, it's not great, but I would sit there and
I would just read other people's stories. Read how so
I would look for role models. And research finds that
role models when you are going through a hard transition,
that is a great way of figuring out one that
you're not alone, and two other how other people strategically
(20:46):
have come out the other side. The other thing you
can do is to harness the power of invitation. So
there was a woman that I interviewed in my book
who was going through a painful divorce, and she was
talking about how her couple friends stop inviting her to
dinner because she was like a fifth wheel. And so
(21:07):
she was saying this to her therapist, and her therapist said, well,
then you start hosting dinner parties and inviting them. So,
if you are going through a transition, if your sense
of mattering has taken a hit, harness the power of invitation,
either issuing an invitation or making a point to accept
invitations even when your life does not feel like it's
(21:29):
in order. There's research that I love called the Beautiful
mess Effect. It shows that we tend to have this
false belief that we need to get our lives in
order and kind of look perfect from the outside. To
be worthy of support, to be worthy of inviting people
into our lives. But it's actually the messiness of our
lives that signal warmth and authenticity, and it's what brings
(21:55):
people closer to us. In my mind, when I think
about the beautiful mess effect, I think about if you've
ever tried to put a sticky, like a little light
sticker on a lacquered surface. It will stick, but it
will slide off because there's nothing to grip. So if
you think about your life and if you are presenting
yourself as perfect, there's nothing for people to hold on too.
(22:19):
There's nothing sticky there. So it's actually in the grinniness
of our lives. It's the messiness of our lives. Not saying,
reveal all your mess but pockets of your messiness. Invite
people in, invite them in to be a support for you,
to help you through it.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Before we go to break, I want to ask what
you've bookmarked this week? It can be a fun quote,
something you've sent a girlfriend, a book that is on
your TVR list. What have you bookmarked this week?
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Jennifer So, I have a few books on my to
be read list, but one of them is Andrew Ross
Sorkins nineteen twenty nine, which is a on fiction book
talking about the crash of nineteen twenty nine. And I
will tell you it is a great read.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
I'm excited about that. I actually put that on my
TVR list too for the holiday season. It's good, Okay.
I want to get into how we can matter not
(23:27):
just to ourselves, but how we feel like we matter
in the world and matter to other people. Can we
kind of go section BI section how do we create
a house and a family where we feel like we matter?
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Yeah? So I would say as a parent, or even
if you don't have children, it's having people in your life,
in your immediate circle that prioritize you and you prioritize them.
Mattering is the sense, particularly in close relationships, that you
matter more than that You matter more than my phone,
(24:02):
you matter more than my work email. You matter. So
you don't have to prioritize them every minute of every day.
But it is noticing and tuning into them and noticing
when they need that mattering feeling, tuning in and delivering
it wonderful.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
And that goes. That's across the board, whether that's at
home or you're saying that is for home and then
work is something separate, I.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Would say one of the things as a parent, what
I've come to realize in researching on mattering is that
parents play a very important role in sending our children
the message that they matter no matter what. So, sending
the signal to our kids that they are not their successes,
(24:46):
they are not their failures, that they're mattering is fully
there no matter what. So a mother that I interviewed
for the book, when her children would maybe get rejected
by a friend, or wouldn't make the a team, or
would bomb a test, and would feel like they didn't matter,
that their worth was somehow less because they didn't perform,
(25:10):
she would reach into her wallet and she would grab
a bill. She would say to our kids, do you
want this money? How much is it worth? And they
would say it's worth twenty dollars. Yes, I'd love it,
and she'd say, okay, hang on a minute. She would
wrinkle it up, she would dunk it in a glass
of water, dirty it with her shoe, and then she
would hold up a soggy, dirty, wrinkled bill and she
(25:30):
would say, how much is it worth? Now? Do you
still want this money? Like this bill? Your worth doesn't
change whether you've been knocked down, rejected, whether you feel
crumpled up or soggy inside. Your worth is your worth,
no matter what. I love that anecdote, right, that is
a message that we could give to our friends, to
(25:52):
our spouses, to our children. You are worthy no matter what.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Jennifer, I'm taking that one with me. That's so good.
One of my favorite chapters in your book was about cornermen,
and actually I was going to explain them, but why
don't Can you explain what a cornerman is?
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Sure, so, a cornerman, I'm not a big boxing fan,
but a cornerman is the person in the corner that
supports a boxer through their training, through the tournament, through
the match. They are able to see blind spots, they
are able to deliver tough love. They are there in
(26:29):
the corner experiencing that fight right along with the boxer.
And so what I write about is how important it
is not just to invite cornermen into our life, to
invest in us, but to be a corner man for
other people. That's something that you know we are wired
to want to invest, to want to create these really
(26:52):
strong relationships with other people. But sometimes things like envy
or competition can get in the way of being a
corner If you are someone who may be experiencing a
lot of envy, you don't have to judge yourself for
being envious. You don't have to judge yourself. We all
evolve to feel envy for healthy, adaptive reasons. You don't
(27:12):
have to judge yourself, but you have to hold yourself
accountable for how you act on that envy. So when
those feelings happen, you can either take the malicious envy route,
which is cutting somebody down or gossiping about someone being
a mean girl so you feel better by comparison, or
you can take the benign, healthy route, which is looking
at them as a source of inspiration. You could go
(27:34):
even a step further and be a cornerman. Look at them,
say to them, I am so impressed with what you
have done. I would love to help you take it
even further. That is an idea that is often beaten
out of us in our zero sum culture, but that's
not how we are wired. We are wired to support
(27:55):
one another. We are wired to want to be there
to hold each other up. So I am here to
say say to you be countercultural. Don't listen to a
society that tells you it's a zero sum game that
somebody else's win is your loss. It is not true.
There is enough joy, there is enough accomplishment and success
to go around.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
So I've found, and this is a personal thing, but
my only issue ever in friendship since I was young
was envy. And I've felt that you really can't be
friends with someone that has any sort of envy for you,
or your life or anything. I always hear Oprah talk
(28:36):
about this you too, you know, like, what is the
difference between that sort of envy and not wanting a
corner man who has that versus somebody who's more benign.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
So what I will say is that if there are
people in your life who are really struggling with the
malicious kind of envy, who maybe don't want the best
for you, I think the way to think about them
is with compassion. All humans want to do well, All
humans want to be good people. We are wired to
(29:09):
want to be good people. So if you have someone
in your life who is really struggling with envy, have
compassion for them, Realize that they don't have the tools
to cope with their envy. And healthy ways. You don't
need to let them close into your life. You can
have them at a distance. I think it would be
very hard to be friends with someone who you thought
(29:31):
didn't want the best for you, So I don't think
you need to necessarily cut them out of your life,
but they cannot be a corner man. A cornerman is
somebody who believes in you and wants everything for you.
We know what investment does to us. We know how
it fills us up and helps us reach for higher goals.
It makes us feel good. But actually investing in other
(29:53):
people allows for what researchers call ego extension, meaning that
your ego as a person. If you're cornerman, your ego
extends to include the successes of the people you support.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
I tell my kids this all the time. Literally, ninety
percent of the joy in my life is the joy
I get from my friends and their successes and their joys.
This is an untapped joy fountain that is just waiting
for you. What a thrill to be able to enjoy
the joy and the success of your friends. It just
(30:28):
makes your life better.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
I totally agree, And if you're comfortable, I do want
to name one of your corner men, because I think
it's so fun your besties with Aa Garten, who you've
called her one of the fairy godmothers of your newest book,
and a quote from her is actually on the front cover.
I need to ask you what the best meal is
that you've ever shared with her?
Speaker 2 (30:50):
She's amazing. I will tell you that I am not
as lucky as Jeffrey, but she will often call me
over because she's testing recipes, and I know, isn't that amazing?
So it's amazing, and I will try her. I mean
even her. She's such a really a scientist. I mean
(31:12):
she can taste things that I can't. I mean everything
she makes is delicious. Wo for her skillet chicken is amazing.
It is so good. So that is sort of a
comfort food for me. But she everything she makes is delicious.
There's nothing I've ever had that Aina has made that
hasn't been amazing.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Has she given you advice? Have you given her advice?
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Oh? My gosh, she gives me so much great advice.
It's funny because one of the pieces of advice she
gave me was a piece of advice she got from
Liza Minelli, which is the title of her memoir, which
is to be ready when the luck happens. That success
is about hard work, it's also about luck. A lot
(31:57):
of it is out of your control. But to say
yourself up so that you are ready when your idea,
when your business, whatever it is, hits, be ready for
the luck to happen.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Love that. There's another chapter of your book that specifically
focuses on mattering at work, which we've touched on a
little bit. I'm really curious what the research says. How
can bosses and managers and team leaders bring a sense
of mattering to the workplace.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Yes, and it's so important that they do. I mean,
when you think about we spend a third of our
lives in the workplace. If we don't feel like we
matter at work, it makes it so much harder to
feel like we matter overall. So I have this framework
that I've developed called Said. It's the Said framework Said,
(32:47):
which stands for the four major ingredients of mattering, significance, appreciation, invested, in,
depended on. So all of those elements are how you
make your colleagues feel like they matter significant. It's not
about throwing them a party. It's in the moments. It
is remembering small details about them, if their mother is
(33:09):
having surgery, marking it in your calendar and going back
to it a week later and saying, how did your
mom do with the surgery. So significance is the idea
that I play a significant role in your mind, that
I am prioritized in your mind, just these little moments appreciated.
Is the difference between saying to a colleague, who is
(33:30):
who is you know, always great at organizing happy hours?
You might say one way of appreciating your colleague would
be to say thank you for always, you know, hosting
these these cocktail hours. They're so fun. But that's not
a way to feed the sense of mattering. A better
way to feed that is to say to your colleague,
(33:50):
thank you for being the kind of colleague who knows
what it takes to build community. It's because of you
that we are so close as a department. Something so specific,
specific about the doer. So don't just thank someone for
the deed for organizing, thank them for being the doer,
the person who gets people together, who builds community. So
(34:11):
nice invested and we talked about it's letting people know
that their goals matter to you. It is providing feedback
in a way that makes people believe you are invested
in them, even your negative feedback, positioning it as I
believe in you. I know you can do this, trusting
them to deliver. And then the last thing is depending
(34:32):
on them, relying on them, the idea that the office
wouldn't be the same without them. So many people feel invisible, interchangeable.
Now AI is coming on the scene. Is that going
to make us replaceable? Let people know that you depend
on them, you rely on them, and that you appreciate
that you can depend on them, that they always come
(34:52):
through for you.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
One of the phrases that I'm really going to take
with me from your book is mattering our and it
combines a few things. One is showing up physically to
a third space. I think about showing up all the time.
I think we're in a lack in our culture and
I'm not sure why. Maybe it is mattering and you
(35:16):
could probably shed some light on that. But the way
you define a mattering architect also touches on how we
show up, and it's about building out and protecting emotional space.
How can we signal to other people that we're wanting
to have these deep connections and deeper conversations.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
So that is such a great question. And what I
have found is it takes real intentionality that you don't
necessarily come out to someone and say I want to
go deeper with you, right, Instead, you create the conditions
where that deepness can take hold. So a book group, right,
that is a place where people gather regularly. You prioritize
(35:56):
each other to show up. So it's requiring showing up,
being and then creating the conditions for those conversations to unwind.
I belong to a group where once a month we
read an article like some in depth article, and we
sit in each other's kitchens over lunch and we talk
about the article. But then it inevitably spills out into life,
(36:17):
what it is to be in the messy middle, what
it's like to juggle workplace demands with raising children. And
so it's creating the scaffolding for those relationships to unfold.
So it takes intention, deliberate time carving it out in
your calendar to let someone know they matter to you.
You are carving out the time that says you are
(36:39):
a priority to me.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
So beautiful, I love that you do that. What a
fun idea. Who picks the article?
Speaker 2 (36:45):
It wasn't. My idea was. And what was so interesting
about this is that it's friends of friends, so it's
not even like a group of close friends. And whoever's
hosting picks the article. And then we sit and I
don't cook, so I order in, but some people cook
a delicious meal. And there's something so intimate about sitting
in each other's kitchens. Yeah, there's something really old fashioned
(37:06):
and fabulous about it. And the food and the article
create that kind of scaffolding.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
I love the ritual of it. It's very cool. We're
coming to the end of the interview, and I want
to actually start with the opening of your book because
there's a quote that hit me so hard. It's so beautiful.
It's a Mary Oliver quote and she writes, I don't
want to end up having simply visited this world. How
(37:34):
does that quote connect to mattering?
Speaker 2 (37:37):
So what I've come to believe is as a human
being on this earth, we have a responsibility to matter,
to matter to the people around us, to add positive value.
And so that quote, to me is a reminder that
we are not bystanders, We are not people just going
through the motions we have a social response cibility to
(38:01):
matter here and so that to me, I mean some
people say they just want to be happy. I want
more than just to be happy. I want to know
that what I do is making a difference. I want
to know that the people around me feel valued. I
want to surround myself with people who make me feel
like I matter. And so to me, that mattering has
become the north star. And I think people are often
(38:25):
searching for happiness, searching for happiness in their New Year's resolutions.
If only I lost the ten pounds, or if only
I did this, And I want you to if you
are in that moment, I want you to think that
is you already matter. You already matter, And even if
you feel like you don't matter, you are one action
(38:46):
and one decision away from mattering again. And that is
sending a text to someone telling them if it wasn't
for them. It's walking out your front door and thanking
the person at the pharmacy who always greet you with
a smile and provides such warmth and telling them my
days have been hard, but I will tell you you
(39:06):
are such a positive light in this world. We have
a responsibility to matter, to the world, to our legacy,
to future generations, to this earth. We have a responsibility
to matter, and we have agency we can matter in
this world.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
Okay, we're going to do something called speed read, which
is I'm going to put sixty seconds on the clock
and see how many rapid fire literary questions we can
get through. Are you ready?
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Let's do it?
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Three?
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Two one? What is a self help book trope that
you would ban forever?
Speaker 2 (39:44):
Self optimization, self optimizing your time? Who you are? I'm
so tired of the self help books. We need to
be in relationship with each other. That's how we matter.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
So agree, Which one would you defend with your life?
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Any book that encourages relatelationships and deeper connection to help
protect our social health, which we don't talk enough about.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
What's a book that you wish you had written?
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Oh, my gosh, so many books. Actually. Choosing Civility is
a book I wish i'd written. It's a tiny, tiny
book by a professor PM I don't know how to
say his last name, Fiorni, and just little rules of
civility in everyday life.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
What's a book that you wish you could read again
for the first time?
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Crime and Punishment. That was the book that made me
understand what psychology was and made me want to write
about what I write about today.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
I'm putting that on my TBR list.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Who is your Desert Island author? Who are you reading
for the rest of your life?
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Maybe my very good friend Chris Pavoni, who writes really engaging,
really smart thrillers.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
You walk into a bookstore and you have ten minutes.
Where are you headed? First?
Speaker 2 (40:54):
General nonfiction new release?
Speaker 1 (40:57):
What's a book that you gift most often?
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Oh? I give so many different books, recently The Good Life,
which is about a study done at Harvard the longest
study ever conducted of human beings, The Good Life.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
And lastly, what would your memoir be called?
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Too Much? The part two from never Enough to too Much?
Speaker 1 (41:18):
I know, no, Jennifer, you matter, You're not too much?
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Okay? Clattering? It would be about mattering.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Yeah, thank you so much. I'm going to be thinking
about what you shared today for a really long time.
I so appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
Thank you for this great conversation.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
If you want a little bit more from us, come
hang with us on socials. We're at Reese's Book Club
on Instagram, serving up books, Vibes and behind the scenes
magic and I'm Danielle Robe, ro b a y come
say hi and DM me and if you want to
go nineties on us, you can call us. Okay, so
our phone line is open, So call us now at
(42:01):
five zero one two nine one three three seven nine.
That's five zero one two nine one three three seven nine.
Share your literary hot takes, your book recommendations, ooh, please
share those and questions about the monthly pick, or just
let us know what you think about the episode you
just heard. And who knows, you might just hear yourself
in our next episode, So don't be shy. Give us
(42:24):
a ring, and of course, make sure to follow Bookmarked
by Reese's book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your shows. Until then, see you
in the next chapter. Bookmarked is a production of Hello,
Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts. It's executive produced by Reese Witherspoon
and me Danielle Robe. Production is by Acast Creative Studios.
(42:46):
Our producers are Matty Foley, Brittany Martinez, and Sarah Schleid.
Our production assistant is Avery Loftis, Jenny Kaplan and Emily
Rudder are the executive producers for a Cast Creative Studios.
Maureene Polo and Reese Witherspoon are the executive producers for
Hello Sunshine. Olga Kaminwa, Sarah Kernerman, Kristin Parla, and Ashley
Rappaport are associate producers for Reese's Book Club. Ali Perry
(43:09):
and Lauren Hanson are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts.
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