Jennifer Breheny Wallace

Those days it might be that I was in the parking lot at the supermarket and it was my turn to get this great spot, but I waved somebody else to let them get it.

Even in that teeny tiny way, I mattered.

I made somebody's day a little easier.

I made them smile.

It just takes pausing and creating a habit of seeing big and small ways that we make an impact on the world around us.

I think it depends on life stages.

So our sense of mattering, mattering matters throughout the lifespan.

It starts from the earliest of days, and it matters right up until we pass.

But there are certain times of life,

when our sense of mattering can take a hit.

So the adolescent years, when we are building a sense of self, and we are searching the world for messages that we matter or we don't matter.

When we go through life transitions,

uh getting a new job relocating uh or even you know especially perhaps negative life transitions grief getting fired um empty nesting these are times when our sense of mattering can really take a hit when the roles that used to provide a sense of value and meaning where it was clear where we were adding value when those roles change

we can really be left wondering, do we matter now?

Yeah, so I have put them together into a kind of framework that I call the SED framework, so it's easy to remember.

So S stands for significance, a feeling of importance.

And what I mean by that is not necessarily the importance you feel at a milestone birthday when people are toasting you or when you receive an award at work.

What struck me the most in interviewing hundreds of people about mattering was that they felt significant in the small moments of life.

When someone remembered something about them, when their preferences were remembered,

So importance and significance, it's really about mattering in the details, mattering in the mundane things of life, feeling like you are remembered.