John R. Miles

that Chris Cassidy demonstrated was also found in the Chilean mine rescue from a number of years ago.

And if people haven't studied this, I encourage you to look at this through the lens of Amy Edmondson, the Harvard professor who pioneered psychological safety.

Not sure if you've read it, Dan, but her white paper on this is phenomenal.

I love it.

And I'm sitting here smiling the whole time you're saying this because whether you knew her or not, you're just describing mattering to a precise T. And I loved how you brought up the awakened sense because it reminds me of Lisa Miller's work on the awakened brain, which is someone, if the audience hasn't heard of her, you can go back to an interview I did, search for it in the archives where we discussed that.

But what you were really describing in that cave

was each man's attention, their voice and action were seen and heard and valued.

And it was materially consequential to the group's survival.

So given that, I want to look at the opposite side of this, which is in systems or communities where people feel interchangeable, managed, or unseen.

What does that erosion look like?

I love that.

And I was recently interviewing Rebecca Neuberger Goldstein, whose episode was two days ago, in fact, who wrote another great book that has recently come out called The Mattering Instinct.

The things that you were describing, she refers to as mattering projects.

And she was saying when people don't have that mattering project, that's when they typically tune out.

And I also liked your definition that you gave for these communities where this stuff is absent because that's where this whole concept of anti-mattering that Gordon Flett came up with really takes hold.

When people in these communities experience anti-mattering or what's happening to presence at the neurological and social level,

They do self-reliance, they perform competence, and they psychologically withdraw.

And that's what's happening to so many communities around us.

It's the self-silencing.

I mean, the psychological withdrawal that we're seeing, which then leads to other things that you were talking about, loneliness, people feeling burned out, the disengagement that we're seeing across companies.