John R. Miles

mattering is passed down or not mattering.

And to me, it's as psychologically important as feeling safe or loved.

And one of the ways we do it is oftentimes we're busy these days and our mind is somewhere else or it's on our device and oftentimes

One of the ways we're not showing the kids that they matter is because we're tuned out.

And I understand from doing some research that part of the reason for writing this book is you say you reached the bottom and you cite this example that happened with your daughter where

You experienced something similar to this.

I understand you were playing a game or an activity with her when an event happened.

I was hoping we might be able to start there.

Nir, you open the book by talking about researcher Kurt Richter, and people are probably not familiar with his name, but they're probably familiar with one of the famous tests he did that involved rats.

A lot of people are familiar with Daniel Pink's book, Drive, which is really an examination of self-determination theory.

And I've been fortunate to have Richard Ryan on the show and really dive into self-determination theory because it's really one of the leading sciences around intrinsic motivation, which is what you're just talking about.

When I think of it, he talks about autonomy, mastery, and relatedness.

It seems like initially what you're talking most about is the first two in the book.

You talk about relatedness, but when you think of self-determination theory, how do our beliefs fit into that model?

It's interesting.

About 18 months ago, I had Angela Duckworth on the program and we were obviously talking about grit because her new book hadn't come out yet.

And I was talking about this whole thing that you're just explaining here.

And I was where I was trying to get her into a conversation about was self-control.

And what I call intentionality, because I think you can have all the passion, perseverance in the world.

You can have these behaviors.