Jennifer Breheny Wallace

We need to figure out how we are going to protect what it means to be human, and that is to matter.

I mean, we evolved to meet this need.

Yeah, so it's so interesting, but the sociologist who created the self-esteem scale that everybody uses was actually the same person who conceptualized mattering in the 1980s.

What I believe he saw is that self-esteem isn't enough.

that we need to know our actions make a difference.

We need, as humans, that social proof that we matter.

So mattering has these ingredients.

It's actually, what I love about it is that it's so practical.

You know, we know the importance, for example, of belonging, but belonging doesn't go far enough.

You know, you can belong to a table or the accounting department.

a neighborhood, a family, and not feel like you matter to the people there.

So what does it mean?

What is that experience of feeling like you matter?

I've put it under a framework I call SED, just so I can remember it easily.

It stands for Feeling Significant,

appreciated, invested in, and depended on.

Those are four ingredients that send the signal that you matter.

I can break them up really quickly for you.

So I interviewed hundreds of people around the world, and I asked every one of them, tell me a time when you felt like you mattered.

And it was never the big moments, like you said.