Jennifer Breheny Wallace

That is almost a false sense of mattering.

True mattering is about feeling valued and adding value to others, but also feeling valued and adding value to ourselves.

So in those moments when either I feel like I matter too much, or maybe I'm not feeling like I matter at all,

one thing you can start to do to turn that around is to really focus on mattering to yourself in small ways.

So I'll talk about it from the perspective of a busy parent.

I am the parent of three children.

And I often felt like it was my job to meet everybody else's needs.

And if there was time left at the end of the day, maybe I could meet a need of my own.

But often weeks went by when none of my needs were met.

But what I found was that that burned me out.

It hurt.

I wasn't thriving when I was allowing that to happen.

And so advice that I would give anybody who is in that sort of struggle of mattering too much is to think about every day one small need for yourself that you could fill so that you can show up as your best self for the people who rely on you.

And it might be something small.

It might be, you know, I want to sit for a half hour

and read my book uninterrupted, sipping my coffee.

Or for another woman that I interviewed who had two small children, for one hour a day, she would take a walk, which was a kind of meditative walk.

It wasn't for exercise.

It was simply to come back to herself and to show herself that she was a priority too.

So, if you are struggling with feeling like you don't matter, I would say start with mattering to yourself again, finding, getting in touch, tuning in to what you need so that you can show up as your best self.