Jennifer Breheny Wallace

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.

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

Appreciation is the next ingredient.

That is feeling appreciated for who you are inside, not just what you do.

So, for example, if you have a friend who buys you a sweater, you can say to them, thank you for this beautiful sweater, or you can feed their sense of mattering by appreciating them for who they are.

Thank you for always being the most generous and thoughtful friend.

I am so lucky to have someone like you in my life.

The next ingredient is invested in.

It's the idea that there are people in our lives who are invested in our goals and who are there to support us through setbacks.

And the last ingredient is feeling depended on or relied on.

Are there people in your life who depend on you?

We live in such a hyper individualistic culture that we often don't signal to people how much we rely on them or depend on them.

And so what I would say to anybody listening is to let the people in your life know that you rely on them.

And you can do it in simple ways.

You could send a simple text to someone saying, if it weren't for you, dot, dot, dot.

You know, if it weren't for you, I wouldn't have had the courage to go for that job interview.