How to Make Your Child Feel Seen: The Science of Mattering | Gordon Flett – EP 733

Why do so many children feel invisible, even in homes filled with love? Today, on the official launch day of my new children's book, You Matter, Luma, we are diving into the heart of why "mattering" is the most important foundation we can build for the next generation. Joining me is Dr. Gordon Flett, the world’s leading researcher on mattering and author of the groundbreaking paper on "Anti-Mattering." In this conversation, we reveal a startling disconnect: while only 8% of parents think their child might feel they don’t matter, nearly 35% of youth report feeling insignificant or uncertain of their worth. Dr. Flett explains why mattering is a "foundational human need" and how we can bridge this gap to protect our children's mental health. This conversation builds on the You Matter series—featuring leading thinkers like Barry Schwartz, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Daniel Coyle, Sonja Lyubomirsky, Harry Reis, and Paul Eastwick—and arrives at a powerful conclusion:Mattering isn’t a luxury. It’s a core human need. If you’ve ever questioned your place, struggled with invisibility, or wondered how to help others feel seen—this episode offers both scientific clarity and human hope. Passion Struck is the #1 alternative health and personal growth podcast dedicated to human flourishing and the science of mattering. It is ranked #1 on FeedSpot’s list of the Top Passion Podcasts on the Web and is consistently recognized among the world's top business and mindset podcasts. Check the full show notes here: https://passionstruck.com/feeling-like-you-matter-gordon-flett/Download a Free Companion Reflection Guide: https://www.theignitedlife.net/p/you-matter-luma-intrinsic-worthConnect with John (keynotes, books, podcast): https://linktr.ee/John_R_MilesGet the New Children’s Book You Matter, Luma: https://youmatterluma.com/Learn More About Gordon Flett: https://www.yorku.ca/lamarsh/gord-flett/In This Episode, You Will LearnMattering is foundational, not optional. It underpins mental health, relationships, and identity. The Difference Between Love and Mattering: Why a child can be loved but still feel like they don't count. Feeling unseen is deeply painful. It can manifest as shame, withdrawal, or a belief that one’s presence doesn’t count. Childhood is the critical window. Early signals of attention and care shape lifelong self-worth. Small moments matter most. Being noticed, listened to, and valued creates a lasting psychological impact. Mattering can be created. Through attention, service, and connection, we can restore it in ourselves and others. Support the MovementEvery human deserves to feel seen, valued, and like they matter. Wear it. Live it. Show it. https://StartMattering.comDisclaimerThe Passion Struck podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Passion Struck or its affiliates. This podcast is not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment from a licensed physician, therapist, or other qualified professional. Connect with John Pre-Order The Mattering Effect: https://matteringeffect.com/Book John to Speak:

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00John R. Miles?

  Coming up next on Passion Struck.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  Kids learn from the stories. Your book, I can't wait to actually see it. I know it's in the mail. Kids learn from the shared stories and also their stories. Like, I would say, this is a great opportunity to say to kids, you know, what's your story? If you've ever felt like this, have you got something that you need to share? Do you think you could make a difference where you might be feeling lonely? And then kids gravitate towards you. But yes, just seeing the difference, and there's real life examples of this as well, that I think can be pointed to, that parents and teachers can point to, in terms of somebody who has got on the mattering track and really made a difference in the lives of others. I'm fascinated by those people who seem to be heaven sent.

• 0:47John R. Miles?

  Welcome to Passion Struck. I'm your host, John Miles. This is the show where we explore the art of human flourishing, and what it truly means to live like it matters. Each week, I sit down with changemakers, creators, scientists, and everyday heroes to decode the human experience, and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning, heal what hurts, and pursue the fullest expression of who we're capable of becoming. Whether you're designing your future, developing as a leader, or seeking deeper alignment in your life, this show is your invitation to grow with purpose and act with intention. Because the secret to a life of deep purpose, connection, and impact is choosing to live like you matter.

• 1:35John R. Miles?

  Hey friends, and welcome back to Passion Struck. This is episode 733. Over the past month, we have been building something together. Not just a series, but a framework for understanding why so many people feel invisible in today's world. With Barry Schwartz, we exposed the optimization trap, how chasing more quietly erodes meaning. With Daniel Coyle, we uncovered the hidden architecture of flourishing. With Harry Reis and Sonya Liebermerzky, we explored why you can be loved and still not feel loved. We examined the matter Mattering Instinct with Rebecca Goldstein. We explored Belonging and Attraction with Paul Eastwick.

• 2:16John R. Miles?

  And along the way, we named something many of us have lived with but never articulated, what I call the Speech and Penitiment of the Soul, where authenticity is replaced by performance. We defined the Luma Effect, how a child's sense of intrinsic worth is formed early before the world conditions it. And in my last solo, we explored the Mattering Mirror, how we learn to see ourselves through the reflected attention of others. All of this has been leading to one fundamental question: What happens when a person feels like they don't matter? Because this isn't just a philosophical idea, it's a psychological condition.

• 2:56John R. Miles?

  It's measurable, and if left unaddressed, it becomes something far more dangerous, what today's guest, my friend Gordon Flett, calls anti-mattering. Gordon is one of the world's leading researchers on mattering, and the scientist who has spent decades studying what happens when people feel invisible, insignificant, or expendable. His work reveals something profound, that beneath loneliness, beneath depression, even beneath much of the youth mental health crisis, is a deeper wound, the unbearable feeling that you don't count. In today's conversation, we explore why not-mattering creates what he calls unbearable insignificance,

• 3:38John R. Miles?

  the hidden link between loneliness and what he describes as double jeopardy, feeling both alone and unseen. We go into why children don't just need love, they need to feel that they matter, how one caring adult can literally alter the trajectory of a life, and why mattering may be the most overlooked lever for improving mental health at a population level. But this episode is also personal, because today, February 24th, marks the launch of my new children's book, You Matter Luma. And if this series has been about understanding mattering, this moment is about planning it early, before it gets

• 4:20John R. Miles?

  So this conversation with Gordon isn't just the next episode, it's the foundation beneath everything we've been building. Let's begin. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to building a life that matters. Now, let that journey begin.

• 4:43John R. Miles?

  I am absolutely thrilled to welcome back my friend Gordon Flett to Passion Struck. Gordon, how are you doing today?

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm doing fine. Fighting a bit of a cold, but doing my best.

• 4:55John R. Miles?

  Since you were last on the show, which wasn't actually that long ago, a lot has actually changed around the topic of mattering. For you, what has evolved in your thinking?

• 5:10Speaker 01

  In terms of my approach to it, first of all, I'm just pleased to see the growth in the field. And this includes, you know, other, other people's work. But I've been focusing more on the applications of this to helping people out in terms of mattering as the resource that they need to help them in terms of healing and getting over things. So there's that element of it in terms of the application. And just continuing to focus on concepts I've studied, like, like antimatter, and which I'm sure we'll talk more about. But, but I just see more and more how this concept resonates with people. And the many ways that it can be put into action. I've had people reaching out to me as well in terms of what can be done

• 5:52Speaker 01

  to make it more of a focus. So next month, I'll be talking with a local school board who's going to make mattering at the heart of their five year safety plan. And it just continues to grow. And as a result of this, when people say to me, are you ever going to really retire? Since I retired at the beginning of last year, I say, Well, how can you? When there's work to be done here, and information to be shared that that can help people. And I also look at the state of the world in terms of where we are right now. And so many people out there feeling alone and insignificant, and knowing that there are people out there who need to get a sense of mattering, and a sense of significance through connections with other people, and the roles that they might be able to assume.

• 6:37John R. Miles?

  How about we go there? So globally, we are experiencing an epidemic of loneliness, which has been really widely covered. I think what has not been covered as much is the youth mental health crisis that's on the rise. Over the past six to seven years, depression is up by 45%. Anxiety is up by 61%. Here in the United States, nearly half of teenagers feel sad or hopeless all the time. Suicide rates are up for youth. Do you see these all as not isolated things, but as crises of antimattering?

• 7:21Speaker 01

  I do. I think they're all interconnected. It certainly plays a role with so much of it. And let's just take loneliness for an example. Loneliness and this concept of antimattering are associated so robustly that we started to talk about the double jeopardy of feeling alone and feeling insignificant. It even hit me in terms of famous songs, the Beatles song Eleanor Rigby. You know, Father McKenzie giving a sermon where nobody will hear it. Eleanor Rigby picking up the rice in a church buried along with her name, "Nobody Came." And it hit me that back in the 60s, the Beatles figured it out that it wasn't just the loneliness of, "Oh, look at all the lonely people."

• 8:02Speaker 01

  It was all the lonely people who actually felt insignificant and unimportant, unnoticed, invisible. So it's been around as a concept, and the Beatles were always way ahead of everybody else. But when I look at the numbers and the increasing numbers, I see that it's definitely an issue of not mattering, which I think can also be through comparisons through social media and the like. One study I'd cite here that I did with a French colleague who contacted me was focused on not mattering in society. And he was showing me that the link between not mattering in society was linked with criminal sentiments and violence, not believing in the justice system.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  And then I said to him, but can you just tell me how many young people in your sample of around 400 French adolescents felt like they don't matter in society? He got back to me, he said, I can't believe it's like two thirds, two out of three say, I don't matter in society. So, once you have that sense of disconnect from society where you're feeling alienated, it's all the more important to get the sense of mattering through your family, through your community, through school and whatever. And it's another form of double or triple jeopardy. If you don't matter in society, or you're from a marginalized group, then you really do need to get that sense of importance and connection and caring from others. The other thing I'll say in terms of the loneliness link is that I did a study with

• 9:25Speaker 01

  colleagues in China, who now showed through this massive sample that they had with four age groups, that the strong link between loneliness and not mattering was there among kids in grades four to six in China. And I was sure if that study was done in North America or in Europe, same sort of findings would be there. So, if you have that sense that very early on is established between not mattering and loneliness, that's gonna carry forward with some that have chronic loneliness. And my daughter's dissertation research, because she's also in psychology, looked at developing a measure of chronic loneliness and showed that anti-mattering was especially strongly correlated with the loneliness that lasts.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Because people see themselves as somebody who's not somebody that other people want to be with, often being incorrect about that because they just haven't put themselves out there for others to enjoy their company. But when it's associated with chronic loneliness and a chronic sense of anti-mattering, that's when I get concerned about the health issues that go along with what we know about the loneliness epidemic.

• 10:34John R. Miles?

  I'm glad you brought up China. Obviously, the government there tends to censor a lot of what is allowed to come out from the public. When I was an executive at Dell and I used to travel there quite frequently, I got to talk to many people over there. And I was in the big cities like Beijing and Shanghai and Hong Kong. But I think we don't realize how much of that society has shifted from village life, where there was a huge reverence paid to elders, to now so much of those village ecosystems are disintegrating and so much

• 11:15John R. Miles?

  of the elderly in China are now kind of left on their own, which is a huge change in that society.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Yes, and it's very troubling because as I've learned since I'm a grandparent and have four, that there are vital roles that are there for the older people in society. And that focus has made it sort of away from what we call the collectivist orientation to more of an individualistic approach. And the problem is, though, that the pressures that people are under, especially the younger people, you know, the quest for it to have to be absolutely perfect, is wrapped around this sense of not mattering and always having this drive. But yeah, in general, the focus on older people, I have a paper that I wrote out of sheer frustration with my colleague back in the start of the pandemic, just to

• 12:05Speaker 01

  see the number of times there were accounts of older people who were treated as if they were expendable. There was even one instance where they changed hospitals for the protection of the people and they forgot a guy and left him there all by himself and the entire institution in a Canadian example there. And I just got fed up hearing, you know, we even heard some accounts in terms of politicians saying, if we have to make a choice between the economy versus older people during the pandemic, we're picking the economy.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  And that horrible sense, no matter what your age is, of feeling expendable and unimportant. And you know, the father of mattering research and theory Rosenberg, in his original paper, said that the two groups most susceptible are adolescents and all the identity issues that are going on and physical changes with adolescents and older people. And he specifically talked about people who are retiring. And that, of course, resonated with me as well in terms of that need to still be doing something that's useful and seen as useful, where you can make a contribution. And invariably, when we look at the people who are heading towards 100, like my, my wife's uncle Derek, almost made it to 100. He was 99 and three quarters.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  If he wasn't stubborn, he would have made it to 100 because he didn't accept help a lot of the time, very self-reliant. But he became the man of the community, and this included throughout his 90s even. So that he felt so useful, even though he lived by himself in the same house he was born in all of his life. And I once asked him, I said, Derek, have you ever felt lonely? And like, because you live by yourself and his brothers had passed and he was, cut me off, he says, not for a second. He goes, because I know right out that door, there's people down the street I can go drop in and they check in on me when I haven't seen me in a while. And it makes an incredible difference. And he told me a funny story. He says, you know, he says, my vitality in the 90s, he goes, I'm a volunteer for Meals

• 14:06Speaker 01

  on Wheels. And he goes, I actually deliver to people who are younger than me because I'm doing better than them. I said, it had to be that sense of giving to others as a way of keeping your sense of connection and importance and usefulness that can blunt a lot of the health challenges that come along.

• 14:25John R. Miles?

  Gord, I want to go back to what you said about your colleague in France and saying that two thirds of the incarcerated said that they, that they didn't feel like they mattered anywhere. Here in the States, the American Council of Immigration did this.

• 14:40John R. Miles?

  Belonging barometer study, which I'm sure you're familiar with. And what was so enlightening to me is it showed that 64% of the people surveyed didn't feel like they belonged at work.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:55John R. Miles?

  67% didn't belong in their communities. But I think the thing that got me, it was like 17% of people felt they don't belong ever.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:06John R. Miles?

  And I wanted to use this because these numbers are huge. You used the frame unbearable insignificance. What does that feel like psychologically for someone?

• 15:20Speaker 01

  And I came up with this term after looking at some of the work, which showed that we had a link between antimattering and a measure that measures what's called psychic or psychological pain. This is when you're having the deep, dark thoughts and really hard on oneself. And again, there was this very robust correlation. But I immediately, I thought, what's going on from a person perspective? Because this person's carrying around a feeling of insignificance. And to say not mattering is not enough. You know, so that's why I came up with the idea of unbearable insignificance. Because in there would be the loneliness as well that, and there's a version of loneliness called unbearable loneliness that has been studied, not as much as it should have been.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  There's that sense of pain, that sense of isolation where people are feeling so badly about themselves that they'll say, you know, if I just stopped showing up in the world anywhere, nobody would even know that I was gone. And the sad part is about this, that often this is a perception of that people have that's not valid in terms of people in their lives. But people don't know they're carrying around this hurt. That's why I say, you know, it's great to just check in on people. And if somebody seems to be doing better than you think they should be, because life is difficult for everybody and everybody has bad days and good days. Some people have a series of that. If somebody seems to be doing too well, I'd want somebody to check in on that person

• 16:48Speaker 01

  and say, you know, Is it the case that maybe you're just putting on the front that hides a lot of this pain? Because wrapped into this sense of unbearable insignificance and loneliness is a deep sense of shame. Where people then say, well, there must be something about me. People try to make it more controllable by convincing themselves that they're defective, that they're really not somebody that other people want to be with and not realizing that people actually do. And the example I gave of somebody who would be having this sense was back when she was still with us, Sinead O'Connor was very suicidal and the world knew about it. And at the start of the anti-mattering paper from 2022, which I encourage people to find, it's open, it's available to the public.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  I gave the quote about her saying, I don't matter a whit to anyone. I don't matter a whit to anyone. So then later on, I followed up and, you know, she had a son and a daughter. The therapist would say, well, do you matter to your son? Oh yeah, I guess I matter to my son. Do you matter to your daughter? Well, yes, of course I matter to my daughter. So this is the thing about mattering is it can be an appraisal. It becomes very absolute, but it's not grounded in the actual ways that people feel about other people. And that's why it's good for people to express their care and appreciation of people. So that they get those reminders and some people need these reminders more than others. But, you know, I'm sitting there going,

• 18:18Speaker 01

  there is a reason why the suicide program is built around the you matter concept. Because ultimately you need that reminder that you matter to somebody or you matter to us to help blunt that and get away, make, make the sense of insignificance and not mattering a little more bearable at least and not in such an all or none way.

• 18:40John R. Miles?

  Before we continue, I want to pause for a moment. One of the most powerful insights from this conversation with Gordon is this. Mattering is not something that we realize later in life. It's something we feel early or spend years trying to recover. That's why I wrote You Matter Luma, not just as a children's book, but as a way to plant intrinsic worth early before kids learn to earn belonging through performance, perfection, or silence. The story is simple, but the message is foundational. You matter not because of what you do, but because of who you are. And to bring this to life beyond the book, we've created something called Pass the Ripple,

• 19:22John R. Miles?

  an interactive experience where kids can turn small acts of kindness into visible impact, watching how their actions ripple outward into the world. Because when a child sees that they can make a difference, they don't just feel like they matter. They become someone who creates mattering for others. You can learn more by going to YouMatterLuma.com or PassTheRipple.com. Both links will be in the show notes. Now a quick break for our sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who support the show.

• 19:53Speaker 02

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• 20:30John R. Miles?

  You're listening to Passion Struck on the Passion Struck Network. Now back to my conversation with Gordon Flood. Gord, the conversations I've had this month during this You Matter series that we're doing have been pretty profound. I started it off with Barry Schwartz, and Barry and I were really talking about rational choice theory. And he is obviously not a fan of it, but he was saying that in many ways, rational choice theory was leading to anti-mattering because of the choiceology that we're using in society. I then followed it up with Daniel Ellenberg, and he has been working with men for over 40 years, really trying to study

• 21:13John R. Miles?

  what is happening, that so many men have strength without heart. And he ties a lot of it to not mattering. Then I brought on Rebecca Goldstein, and we really went into what she calls mattering projects, and how, as you were talking earlier, there are some people who find mattering projects that lead to flourishing, and then there are others who are like Hitler, who find mattering projects that lead to the opposite direction. And then yesterday, I released an episode with Dan Coyle, and we were talking about how so many people today are pursuing lives of treasure accumulation instead of treasure

• 21:56John R. Miles?

  creation. And then, leading up to your episode, it went into Harry Reis and Sanju Lubramirsky, who were talking about how when mattering goes away in relationships, the impact that it has. And then I looked at the evolution in relationships with Paul Eastwick, where if that evolutionary component goes away, what ends up happening in relationships? So, all of this kind of builds up to this question. Why is feeling that you don't matter so uniquely painful compared to other forms of distress?

• 22:33Speaker 01

  I think it's because it goes right back to our early experiences where I have to back up a bit and say that mattering, one of the key elements of mattering is the feeling that you have other people's attention. And that's critical from a survival perspective early on, again, in terms of getting the attention of one's parents or caregivers to, for infants to be fed and get the nurturance that, and the nourishing that they, they need. And I believe that there's a reward value that's set up for the attention and the importance of somebody showing you that they're, they're paying attention to you. And I think that can be very hardwired to, for, for people. So that when they get older and they lose that sense, they know at some level that it's what provided them with a sense of comfort,

• 23:18Speaker 01

  allowed them to survive and to thrive in the early days. But now there's this, this sort of feeling of, well, something is missing here. And I see this, you know, I said, I have four grandchildren and two of them are babies that were born six weeks apart. And the oldest is now like 10 months. And I just watch how they're amazingly responsive to the attention that parents give them, but they also have ways to signal and get the attention of the parents. And when somebody says, oh, you know, people just think I need attention. Well, we do need attention to, to some degree. And it's just hardwired. So I, I look at it in terms of, you know, we know that we need this at some level. And

• 23:59Speaker 01

  we also unfortunately, again, here we come through social media as we can see that there's other people who seem to have lives that are just great and they're getting the attention and the sense of mattering that other people, a lot of these, of course, are crafted images of lives that don't actually exist, which has been discovered in some sad situations. So we have this circumstance where people are going, well, I don't feel it, I don't see it in my own life. But look at these people over here. It could even be a sibling, you know, where there's a favorite child amongst them and everybody knows it, although nobody will acknowledge it. And you can say that you're not getting the attention even within your own family. But the reason why it hurts is that because people

• 24:42Speaker 01

  When you go back to what mattering is, it was used as a guide for self-evaluation, reflected appraisal on the self. So ultimately, you can come up with the sense that, you know, you are just not somebody that is of interest or worth being pursued. And I always mention in terms of past theorists that Gregory Brown, who was a student of Morris Rosenberg, in his book, he talks about the abject feeling of feeling that you don't matter because it's a sense of profound social rejection. And if you're not getting a sense of mattering through your relationships or through organizations, you can feel profoundly rejected.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  And he talks about this in the concept of the work by Williams on being ostracized, where you feel that you're so far removed, and it's not just through lack of attention that people are actually keeping you at a distance. But of course, it's also the case that people who feel that way often keep themselves at a distance because they're expecting negative responses from others when in fact, they might be getting positive. I just want to underscore again, though, that mattering is a subjective appraisal. And to underscore that people can be so inaccurate in terms of this, one thing that we studied through our school board project was, we asked the young people whether they felt

• 26:05Speaker 01

  they mattered, and about thirty-five percent of them either said, "I don't matter," or "I don't know if I matter." Then we asked parents, "Is it possible that your child feels like he/she doesn't matter?" And only eight percent of parents said that they felt like it could be that their child has a sense of not mattering. So I'm saying, well, there's about one out of five kids are walking around with a feeling of, "I don't matter," yet their parents think they do matter. Whenever I mention this in an audience of parents, they're horrified, looks because now they're thinking, "Is this my kid?" So what I tell them is, just make it so that they know they matter. You know, whether it's small things you do, or big things, or just tell them.

• 26:48Speaker 01

  So that, but the best is to just to show through little considerations. If somebody's been away, just say you were thinking about them, miss them. There's so many different ways of doing it. My wife, back when I started, and we were a single income family, often I would find a note for a road trip that she had left when she had packed my bag. Cause she's way better than I am and or in my lunch. And I know she did this with our daughters and that, you know, even just writing somebody a note, because we don't write notes to people anymore. And that that can also show it. So if you're not sure whether somebody in your life has a feeling of matter and you think they do, but you're not sure, just show them. And there's a multitude of ways you can do that.

• 27:32John R. Miles?

  So since you brought up that eight percent of parents, which to me is drastically low, I, I think they just probably don't want to admit that that it's happening, but it could be, maybe they don't realize the warning signs. Do you have some tips that you could give for a parent who might be listening? If their child feels that they don't matter, how can they see it?

• 27:56Speaker 01

  First of all, it's gonna be a sign that they might feel they don't matter if they're not engaging. They're, they're locking the door a lot. They're not spending time. One thing I want to point out though, is that the underestimates of parents also applies to mental health issues in general. It's well known through multiple studies that parents underestimate the despair and the kids because they're so good at hiding behind a facade or throwing themselves into things like sports or friendships. But nobody ever really taps into how they're feeling inside. So the outside doesn't match the inside. I would just say if, and again, if the child seems too unflappable, that to me is an indication.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  I'm particularly concerned about the perfectionistic young people who put on the perfect front. And then we, we hear a sad story where somebody says, nobody knew that this was a problem. I mean, they know that he or she was feeling this way. But I say, you know, just find ways to engage. And the best way is to find some group things where you can suspend time together. One of the best. Indicators of a sense of mattering, especially when there's been a breakup in the family, a single parent situation, is how much time the parent spends with the child in things where they seem to be enjoying each other's company. And that can give a, you know, but, but also just asking questions in a way that will elicit a sense of what's going on for that child's

• 29:24Speaker 01

  feelings. So just as an illustration of this, my wife has relatives in Hingham, Massachusetts, and almost all of them are retired teachers. My wife is a retired educator as well. So we were there visiting one day while back, and Jane, who's a fabulous retired educator, has, has a grandchild coming in. And I watch as Jane says, has sits the child down and says, "Hey, how'd your day go? Tell me one good thing about your day," and listens and, and just listening to them talk and without interrupting, that deep sense of somebody's taken the time to ask me, but now they're listening to me, is a, is a key thing. And

• 30:07Speaker 01

  then she'll say, "Now tell me something that wasn't so great about your day," which is a way to get into whether there's bullying, or exclusion, or ostracism, or, you know, a teacher didn't respond the way that Jane would have if she was the teacher. And it just keeps the dialogue going, where you can just show through your interest and, and think, and that you're trying to understand what it's like to be that young person, sends an incredible message of not only trying to understand, but also acceptance, and just finding ways to get more dialogue. If there's no conversation going on, odds are there's something that's sadly being hidden.

• 30:43John R. Miles?

  Gord, you have written about the healing power and the core need of mattering. And when I've read your work, what really strikes me is that you're reframing mattering from a helpful psychological construct into something that's far more consequential, meaning it's a foundational human need with profound healing potential. And I think that is the thing to, to highlight here. So I want to talk about this in children. Why is mattering such a core developmental need for kids?

• 31:19Speaker 01

  The first element of this is that some kids are insecure. There's certainly the uncertainty of going through and not knowing what could happen. And it can just provide a sense of reassurance and guidance. It provides the closeness and comfort of a parent or a grandparent or a guardian is there to really interact at a close level. And I can give you an example of this. You know, I'm not going to go big into storytelling, but I remember vividly, as most people do, because I was old enough for it to be around when it happened, the day that JFK was assassinated. I came home for lunch because I had both my grandmother, who lived with us, and my mother at home, and I came home for lunch. And the TV is on, so I'm eating my lunch.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  I remember even it was tomato soup, Campbell's tomato soup. And on comes the story that seems to be a problem in Dallas. And then eventually Walter Conkite comes on with the news that shook the world. And I sat there and my mother and my grandmother were there. And of course, this is the, like, childhood is over in terms of my sense of innocence from this point on. So my mother and grandmother said, "Well, you're not going back to school. You're going to stay here. We're just going to talk about this." Because they wanted to try and, you know, make me realize that I'm not have to worry personally and just help through the confusion. And when somebody shows that sensitivity to you, especially at a young age, you don't forget it.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  In terms of knowing again that if something were to happen down the road, you could then go and seek these people out. And this is the key thing in terms of establishing these relationships. There are times when young people in particular, suffering from mental health issues, need to get help and need to acknowledge help, but they never will. When you have a matter in relationship where there's acceptance, it's more likely that a young person would reveal to a mother, a father, a grandparent that they need help, and that can set them off in a way. I was even at a conference one time, unbelievable story, so I won't get into it, but I was invited to an anti-terrorism conference for my work on perfectionism.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  And at the break, up comes a guy and he says to me, "I'm talking to you now as a father. I'm not talking to you as an analyst for CSIS in Canada, which is our agency that deals with counter-terrorism and that." Because my daughter has revealed to me that she's a student in Quebec and that she's suicidal. So this is one of the first times when I said, you know, I'm here to talk about perfectionism, but this is where mattering comes into play. Because I said to him, whatever you've done to create a relationship where your daughter will admit to you and your wife that she's feeling this way, keep doing that. And just keep checking in on her and reminding her. And a key thing that parents need to realize is that as kids get older and we get into the adolescence, oh, they want to be with their friends.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  They don't want their parents to bug them. They still want the attention, even if they won't admit it, or they'll say, get away, leave me alone, not to the point where you're a helicopter parent, certainly. But I think the problem is, for a lot of young people, they get that attention earlier in life, starting with the early years. And they might get it through the more earlier stages, in terms like me in grade one there when that news came at lunch. But then some parents feel that they're not effective, or they're not wanted, and they stop trying. And a big factor with parents is their feeling of efficacy as a parent. Parents need to matter, too. And expressing this and finding ways to nurture that mutual need will keep these relationships going.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  But it's so hardwired, and I do believe that, you know, they talk about psychological needs. The three that people talk about are the need for communion, people like at University of Rochester, the need for connection, and the need for autonomy. And I've always said the fourth need is the need to matter. And we have seen in the anti-mattering work that if you feel like you don't matter, that people are treating you like you're invisible and unwanted, and not even insignificant, but insignificant, if you're actually feeling this way, it impacts those other needs, where you don't feel as competent anymore. You don't feel that you can go out and do something where you can make things happen in terms of autonomy.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  So it's a core need, but it also relates to other needs, and other needs as well, like in terms of the need for attention and the need, the need just for somebody to be checking in on you. But... I see that sort of thing. It's great if it's satisfied, but you need to keep having it satisfied. And sadly, there's so many people out there who don't have their need for mattering to be satisfied. And I'm actually doing some work with a colleague in Italy, Sylvia Cassell, where we've created a measure of the unmet need to matter. And it's robustly correlated with anti-mattering and a hypersensitivity being hurt when somebody treats you like you don't matter. We need to get more people addressing that core need.

• 36:28John R. Miles?

  Gord, I want to give you some different scenarios to try to make this real for people who are listening, especially those who are parents, but also those who might have experienced a feeling they didn't matter as a child, and now it's cascaded into their adult life. So when I think of mattering, I think there's a huge correlation between self-efficacy or self-worth and how that shapes us. And when I think about how kids grow up, there are kind of three groupings that I see. There's the grouping where a child has a parent who is really concerned about their performance. This is kind of the lawnmower parent, the

• 37:11John R. Miles?

  helicopter parent. And so the child feels like they have to perform in order to feel their self-worth. There's another category, I think, of parents who teach the child that their silence is how they earn mattering. Just be quiet. Don't say anything. You don't have a voice in the family. And so that's how they learn their performance. And then I think there's a third category that ends up showing up where the parent is so distracted. And as you mentioned, parents need to feel like they matter. Maybe they have

• 37:52John R. Miles?

  Reach this point where they don't feel like they matter and they're completely tuned out. So the child is trying to express things to them and they're so tuned out to worried about work or their phone or something else that the child just stops bringing their intentions to them. Do you think I'm categorizing this right? And if so, what then happens to those children across a lifetime?

• 38:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:18John R. Miles?

  From that early upbringing?

• 38:19Speaker 01

  What I recognize there is that there are different pathways to that sense of not mattering. And sometimes it's neglect and non-involvement. Sometimes it's, you know, a parent might be incapacitated with their own health issues. Rosenberg talked about narcissistic parents being so involved with themselves, they can't connect with the other people in their lives. But at the end of the day, some people are carrying this around with them, as you said, and it's a lifelong pattern and there's incredible stress and upset. But there's also people who will break out of that. And that's, I think, where there's a role for the school to be played in terms of this. We had a great school where our daughters benefited and we became involved as parents and were part of the school council.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  So that, you know, what I tell, what I tell schools, and I'd be giving a talk on Monday to a bunch of educators in Quebec. And I say, the kid who comes to school not feeling a sense of mattering at home really needs to get that sense of mattering at school. And this is why educators are, they resonate with the concept of mattering, because there are those stories of the one caring adult who has changed a kid's life entirely by showing an interest and becoming the mentor to that child. You know, there are those routes to get out of it, but sadly, there are those people who have got a sense of abandonment or lack of interest and they never snap out of it. But I still say that

• 39:46Speaker 01

  there's room for hope. And within situations like that, where I've talked to people like that, I say to them, you can generate your own sense of mattering through this focus on service, making a difference in other people's lives in a way that you don't rely on somebody treating you. The right way. And then ideally it'll become a reciprocal mattering relationship where, you know, you've made them feel like they matter and it feeds back into you. Or you can see the, see the, the way that people get so animated when somebody's taking an interest in them. And, and showing that they really care. But, you know, I've often asked myself, does anything make up for the sense of, I had a parent who wasn't really interested in me. It's a pretty tough thing to overcome.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  But you can blunt it to some extent and learn to, develop other relationships and we've seen cases where, people might not have the ideal nuclear family origins that, that they want, but they've met somebody who's changed their life and who becomes their partner. So, and this is the thing about mattering is that, I always say that it comes wrapped around the sense of hope. They're strongly related in terms of research and, people are very hopeful if they have a sense of mattering. Just wanted to say one thing about self-efficacy that you were mentioning. I was just reading last night, some of the classic work by a researcher named Deschamps on the feelings of, young people feeling like they're either a pawn, where they're being pushed around a board by other people with little significance.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  Or they're actually having a sense of agency. And they call, he, he contrasted people as pawns versus origins. And I was reading this and I was thinking, if you're a child that has a sense of mattering, you are going to fall into that origin, category where people have said, we believe you can find the ways to address things. You can overcome things. We have a faith in you that you might not even have in yourself. And I think that this is where a lot of the positive benefits of mattering, come from this sense of, you know, I'm an origin, I make things happen. And not to the point it becomes narcissistic. That's where, you know, healthy respect for others and asking about, others and how they're doing gives that sense of otherness.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  And I thought, it's too bad that the charm's not around these days to talk about this concept and how, they would be connected, but origins in, school situations, they did better, they're more engaged, less likely to get into trouble in terms of, you know, violent behavior or truancy. And consistently you see with mattering, including research with young children, that not only is there a sense of hope, there's a very strong sense of agency. That I can make things happen. Which is why it's a key factor in terms of promoting resilience. And also adaptability, which we've shown in some of our work.

• 42:31John R. Miles?

  Gord, I have a philosophical question for you. Do you think strengthening mattering in childhood could shift population level mental health?

• 42:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, I do. I believe that if there's a societal focus on mattering, that will shift population health. First of all, it's important to point out that there's now about 10 studies that have shown that mattering is associated with the core health in terms of self-rated, but also objective measures. But I look at it in terms of how many people are out there feeling marginalized and feeling unimportant in society. We know that in community research done with surveys of children in the United States, that when asked, "Do you matter in the community?" About half of the young people say, "I don't matter in the community." And then it's worse if there's other forms of marginalization or stereotype or stigma.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  So LGBTQ kids, it's about only one in three say, "I matter in the community." And I said, "Until we address that as a basic indicator, we're going to see all kinds of problems emerging through either depression and mental health or some of the more violent episodes that are there." And it doesn't take a lot, that's what frustrates me about why we don't have more of a prevention mode. It doesn't take a lot to go and change and give somebody a sense of mattering in society. One person can literally change somebody's life in terms of this. And we need to do this broadly. And I had a colleague who was talking about, she sat in on a proposal for a giant resilience project. And they were getting, you know, millions of dollars to do this.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  She sat there listening and said, "They've covered every construct in psychology except mattering, self-regulation, mindfulness, and just generic talk about resilience." And just saying, you know, if mattering was prioritized, that this would address so much of the issues that are there in terms of the mental health. Because I do believe that, you know, not mattering can make you susceptible to these problems. But also, if you feel like you don't matter, it's going to impact the course of recovery once you have sought help. And that's why I talk about in terms of the the healing power of mattering, the importance of having mattering centered therapy relationships as well, where sites that are dedicated to getting

• 44:51Speaker 01

  everybody feel like they matter. It frustrates me because a little bit could go such a long way. And for those who need to have it in terms of dollars or cents, I prefer to focus on the human costs of not promoting mattering, but the actual costs in terms of, we're talking workplace absenteeism, lost productivity, cost to the health system. There are so many objective indicators that would suggest this is the way to go as well. But at the end of the day, of course, the people who engage in this just feel better about themselves in terms of making a difference in somebody else's life. So yeah, if if if there's somebody out there with a trillion dollars and they want to really make a difference, and I've

• 45:33Speaker 01

  heard this because I've sat in on meetings with donors, nobody with a trillion, in my role formerly as research dean at our university in academia health, these people, big donors, there's a subset of them who really do want to improve society. And I would say, if that's the case, take that money, put it into action in terms of promoting mattering, and you'll never be feeling that there was an ounce of energy or or money wasted.

• 46:00John R. Miles?

  Yeah, because this is really a systems change. If you think about it, it's systematic change across society. And I want to go back to something you brought up earlier, Gord. You didn't mention his name when you brought it up. But in your work, you reference Yuri Ruffenbranner's idea, and you phrased it differently, but it's it's basically every child needs someone who's crazy about them.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 46:22John R. Miles?

  And you've kind of talked about what happens psychologically to children who don't experience this. But if policymakers truly understood this principle, how might schools, communities, or mental health systems look different?

• 46:37Speaker 01

  I have to say about Yuri Bronfenbrenner, a hero of mine, and I actually had a very close brush with him because I was at a conference in Washington and I was speaking with my wife and I said, "Wait a minute, I hear a voice behind me, I know who that voice is." And I want to point out, he was often in Washington because he was going in front of the policymakers in terms of advocacy and the main message there of, "Somebody needs to be crazy about the kid." So what this would look like in terms of societal change, just as one example, I've made the case and gone on radio in Canada saying, "Why don't we just have an hour a week in the schools? Forget about the curriculum and let's just focus on promoting the well-being of these

• 47:18Speaker 01

  young people and their teachers and everybody else in the school in a way that will also intrigue many of them to pursue a career probably in psychology or counselling." And I've seen schools that have done this and unfortunately it's not documented where people can find it, but just one example, we had this resilience project with six schools and I oversaw the research and I actually looked at every single data point for every kid in that study and I got to the point where I'm saying, "Okay, did our resilience intervention work in terms of the experimental ones that received the intervention versus the control group?" And I immediately looked and realised it had failed horribly because there was one

• 48:00Speaker 01

  school of the control schools that had kids with astronomically high resilience scores and well-being scores. So I went to the school board people I was working with and I said, "What's going on with that one school?" And they said, "Oh yeah, they're one of our best schools. On Mondays, they have mental health Mondays, school-wide, and on Fridays, they have physical fitness Fridays, school-wide." And I said, "Why did you pick them as a control group?" Because my advice now is, do what they're doing. Because the message that comes on Monday, every Monday and every Friday, is that we care about you to the point, we're taking school time and we're making this a focus.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  It doesn't have to take great resources, it doesn't have to... To take cash outlays, it just means it needs to be a focus where the message is sent, hey, we care about you here so that these are kids who want to get to school and stay engaged as opposed to staying home and drop dropping off the radar. And this school did it, and I've I've seen another project. Unfortunately, it didn't go to fruition because the key people at another school board retired. But I asked them, in all the schools you have with all the data, because I got them to ask mattering, can you find me schools that are doing way better in terms of kids feeling like they matter versus ones who don't? And they said, yes, here it is. And it wasn't correlated with size of school or well being, but but there was something going on.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  I said, the next step is we go back and we see what's going on in those schools, starting with the leadership, that it prioritizes the human relationship side, which then feeds into resilience and adaptability. The one school board I worked with, by the way, most of their interest initially was because they were having kids with behavioral problems, including things that are not something you want from a lawful perspective. And I said, but what you find when you focus on mattering is that you'll address those behavioral problems. You'll see that there's a mental health boost for most kids. But also you'll see a payoff for those superintendents out there who are just worried about the bottom line in terms of test scores. Test scores are higher too.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  Because in fact, they're engaged, they want to be there, they're learning. Mattering has a great learning and growth orientation that comes along with it, along with the hope. So we could do things, we could do things in business, and I know that the US Surgeon General, Dr. Murthy, when he was in charge, had mattering as one of the five pillars of workplace mental health. As an extension of his work on loneliness and the loneliness epidemic. So places that really embrace this are going to see the benefits in a way that, you know, and and other people will want to be there. That's the other thing in terms of attracting people and and having your choice of who you'd like to have. So there's so many things that can be done socially.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  We just need to make it a priority once and for all, rather than talking about it.

• 51:02John R. Miles?

  Gord, I want to make sure I mention Angela Myers in our conversation. You and I were talking about her before we came on the show, and she's also been talking about this since the early 2000s. And it was about during that time when mattering was identified as a pillar of positive youth development alongside self-efficacy, which we've already talked about.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:24John R. Miles?

  But the field ended up focusing really heavily on achievement and then not enough on mattering, as we've been discussing. Do you believe we've lost time, perhaps even a generation, as Jonathan Haidt wrote about, by not elevating mattering sooner?

• 51:43Speaker 01

  Back in 2002, this big committee came up with the six keys, the positive youth development and the support for efficacy and mattering was one of the six key components. And then I traced it through and go, you know, well, what happened? Well, much of that focused on the efficacy. The mattering got lost in the shuffle, in part because mattering wasn't the bigger research focus that it is today. It was only around that time that research on mattering started, started to accumulate. And but the thing is, if you talk to individuals, like you talk to educators, you talk to coaches, they know this. They know the value of showing

• 52:26Speaker 01

  somebody that you care about them. So it has been a lost opportunity. And, you know, if I was sitting there doing a scorecard, I'd go, well, unfortunately, there was the answer provided 20 years ago, and nothing systematic or programmatic came out of that, I could tell. And by the way, where I tried to trace the origins, where did this come from? Like, why did it end up on their radar as opposed to, you know, being lost in the shuffle back in the early 2000s? And it came out of research on farm communities and especially 4H communities. And if this resonates with me, because my daughter Allison, the psychologist, married a dairy farmer who was the kid across the hall. So I've talked to people in the

• 53:11Speaker 01

  community where two of our grandchildren are. And I remember I was talking to Jeremy's mother, who's co-running the dairy farm with him now. And I said, you know, the value of kids having a role and a responsibility where they know that their livelihood of the family might depend on it. Well, farm communities, farm families learned this very early on. And of course, it was tested back in the Great Depression and Dust Bowl days. And I said, so it's, but it's too bad that we don't find a way to take that focus and emphasis, because everybody needs to feel needed. And when kids have a responsibility, like if you look at the dairy farm that that our son-in-law operates with his mother, they're all needing to be involved with this. Even our daughter, the

• 53:54Speaker 01

  psychologist, when she's not giving online therapy to some of the people she treats with problems like OCD, she's in charge of feeding the baby caps that are born. The idea that it's clearly documented that there's this benefit, some of the higher community mattering scores come from farming communities, especially kids who are in 4H and going, again, let's just do what they do. But literally, there was two decades lost. And you could say three decades in terms of really needing much more of the focus on mattering that we now have.

• 54:27John R. Miles?

  I want to hone in on what you're just talking about, because what you're saying here is that these kids are experiencing more mattering because they're kind of feeling it through experience. And you've spent decades now studying mattering scientifically, but for most kids, they don't encounter, as Rebecca Goldstein would say, this mattering instinct in research papers. They encounter it through relationships and stories. So I recently wrote a children's book called You Matter, Luma, as a way to create a story to help carry this message to kids. And I want to ask you, Gora, from a scientific perspective,

• 55:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:09John R. Miles?

  Can a repeated message that a child matters shape their development? Can stories influence a child's sense of worth?

• 55:16Speaker 01

  Yes, and you know, my wife is actually retired school librarian. It's the stories and their content, but it's the people with you, like when you're reading stories together. Or you want to share things together. There's a sense of community and communion there that makes a difference. But kids learn from the stories and you know, your book, I can't wait to actually see it. I know it's in the mail, but kids learn from the shared stories and also their stories. Like I would say, this is a great opportunity to say to kids, you know, what's your story? You know, if you've ever felt like this, have you got something that you need to share? Do you think you could make a difference where you might be feeling lonely and then kids gravitate

• 56:01Speaker 01

  towards you? But yes, just seeing the difference and there's real life examples of this as well. That I think can be pointed to, that parents and teachers can point to in terms of somebody who has got on the mattering track and really made a difference in the lives of others. I'm fascinated by those people who seem to be heaven sent. Angela Myers is one of them, by the way. I think, you know, it's no coincidence that Angel is in her first name. Where she has dedicated herself to going around. She tells me she's talked to hundreds of thousands of kids, telling them stories, making them feel special. But mostly also wanting to hear from them in terms of how they're doing. So stories can make an incredible difference though, and I'm very glad to learn about your book.

• 56:46Speaker 01

  And I knew that it's been in the works for a while. Because you know, there's the message in the book, but there's also the conversations that come around the book, you know, where a parent or an educator could say, okay, now let's talk about this concept in terms of a time when you might've felt you mattered or you didn't matter. So it's a way of opening the doors to these conversations that need to take place. And also, mattering makes people feel good. I just had a paper accepted where I looked at some of these actual feelings in terms of the positive affect that comes from this. So it's gonna give a boost to spirits and it's gonna open the door to other emotions and when it's shrouded in hope, why wouldn't the kids then say, hey, maybe I can

• 57:31Speaker 01

  be somebody who makes a difference by gathering together others and showing them that I care about them. And, you know, that's how we're gonna get a whole bunch more educators and counselors and psychologists. Angela's done this, by the way, where she was a classroom teacher for many years. She's done this because she told me that each week she would pick five kids to give them the individual attention that they may not get in a bigger class. And she says, you know, by the end of the week, these kids are transformed because the teacher has centered them out, but everybody knows that everybody's gonna get a chance and it's gonna be this way. And she says, this is how we end up with kids who understand what it feels like to matter and become what she calls mattering ambassadors.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  And she's now doing work in Appalachia in some very poor areas to try and give those kids a sense of mattering and hope in addition to how they're already feeling. Her dedication to this is because she's seen how it transforms lives. And always in a good way. As opposed, and especially needed, if you've had an experience of the anti-mattering, you need to build the positive mattering as a buffer to that.

• 58:40John R. Miles?

  The work she's doing is exactly where it begins and the ones and zeros that you start influencing and because you never understand how far a ripple by changing one of those lives can change the trajectory for the future and one of the other ulterior motives I had with the book is I think parents are spending less and less time with their kids in full presence. So my thought process was if you give them a book about mattering, and it takes about fifteen, twenty minutes to properly go through this and they do it repeatedly, you're helping the parent also see the five-year-old in themselves, but you're giving them undivided attention with the child on this topic,

• 59:22John R. Miles?

  reinforcing again and again, you matter and changing the conversation that they're having with the kid.

• 59:30John R. Miles?

  Because it opens up the opportunity to ask them more in-depth questions, which I'm hoping will create more of a ripple effect. Do you think there's some science that backs that?

• 59:43Speaker 01

  Well, you know, we always talk about the contagion of things that aren't so good, but I do believe that once you experience it, you know the consequence. I've seen this with adults too. Once you have a lens on the world about valuing people, you interact differently with people. You see things that other people might not see. I was talking to a principal now superintendent, who had a situation with a teacher who had to be suspended for, I don't know what happened there. But when he came back, you know, because he knew about mattering, the principal is looking and he sees this guy who's ashamed of himself for whatever happened, I don't know. And he's sitting in the lunchroom with all these other teachers off by himself. And he said, knowing what I knew about mattering, I couldn't leave that guy sitting there by himself.

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  I need to know that he was forgiven. He did his time for whatever was the problem. And that I was welcoming back. And this principal told me, he then got promoted. And he said that when he went and told this fellow, who he'd now built this connection with him, sort of built him back up. He says, rare, but the other teacher, he started to cry because he was now losing the guy that had seen him when everybody else was off to the side. So, you know, I do believe it can create this. And for kids, once kids learn about mattering, I know the New York Times article from about two years ago now, had a write-in segment and kids were saying in there,

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  you know, now that I know about this, I'm going to do something about it. But the part about the connection with the parents too, like undivided time, where there's no looking at the phone, and social media where the kid is, is the focus. And I came up with this through fluke that our daughter Alison, who's now the psychologist, whenever she would go to bed, she'd have trouble going to sleep. So I invented something called boy stories, where I would start telling her, sometimes truthful. Sometimes fabricated stories about me growing up. Starting with the time my friend and I went to local golf course to get golf balls in the water in the deep dark night. And, you know, we, we built this bond because even when she got older and she'd be past

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  the age of wanting to have this, she said, tell me a boy's story. I said, well, you've heard all of them. Make up a new one. And one of the things I did with both of our daughters, because I never felt that I got enough time with them in, with the summer and not teaching a summer course in August, is at the end of the summer, we would have Park Day. Where I said, we're going to start as early as we can get out of the house and we're going to go to every single park we can go to until you tell me you haven't had, you've had enough. And that was something we always looked forward to. Because they knew that it was going to just be me and them having fun, occasional treats and undivided attention as a reminder that I'm going to be there. And, you know, that, that built a bond.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  And I just want to say for parents who think that the older kids don't need this, well, well, they do. I'll just briefly tell a story that when our first daughter, who's been dealing with juvenile diabetes since the age of eight, was going off to university, she was going to Ottawa, to Carlton, whereas we live in Mississauga in the greater Toronto area. And on the way there, I said to Haley, as we're driving her there, and it's very hard, as parents know, when you're leaving the child's university for the first time, starting to get that empty nest. I said to her in two weeks, I said, I studied homesickness too. In a couple of weeks, if you need to come home, I will come and get you. And I said, because you need to know your home is still here and we're still here for you as a secure base.

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  And she said, oh, I won't need it, Dad. I won't need it. I'm, you know, I'm a tough university student. But it was clear when it was time for us to leave and leave her by herself in Ottawa, she didn't want us to go. So on the Tuesday of the second week, she phones and she goes, you know that offer of, can I come home? Is it still there? I said, of course it's there. And I said, it's a time unlimited opportunity. Okay. I said, so I'll drive all the way there and all the way back on Thursday. It's like 11 hours in total. And then she says to me.

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  Can other people come too? Because I have four other girls who need to come home as well when they heard about that you had made this offer. So I had a posse of young girls from the same university. Drove back and you know, just hearing their stories kept me awake and I was able to do the coast to coast to coast trip. But I want to point out for the parents who don't think they're needed and they're not cared about. When it came time to take those girls back on the Sunday. Rolled up into the one driveway and there's a dad out there with his daughter saying goodbye to her. Cause he's going back to Ottawa. And the dad is crying buckets of tears and the daughter starts crying bucket of tears. And because they're missing each other so much.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  And I said, this is the key thing is like, as a parent, even if you're so busy, just say once in a while, hey, I miss the days when, or I miss the time when. And the reminiscing can make a huge difference. So I also turned to my daughter who was sitting beside me and I said. She's not gonna last at Carlton. This is a one year and done. And sure enough, that student then decided. To transfer universities and to come back home. Just because she was missing being home so much and but clearly it meant such a thing to the parents as well. So I just want to say that it's great if the conversation can continue beyond kids for the age of the book. And it's great if resources are developed. And one of Canada's best known children's authors, Eric Walters, who's won the Order of Canada Award.

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  Has got a book coming out probably in the next year or so. And that's how we met. He was a former teacher and social worker. And he's written a book about that one caring adult who changes a life and the story for teenagers is called Far From The Tree. And it's about a young man who has a history of criminality in his family. His dad's incarcerated, his older brother's incarcerated. But the principal takes an interest in this kid and says, I'm not letting this kid go down that same path. So the principal's looking out for the child and when the kid's not in school. Is asking, where are you and checking in on him, not to the point of harassment. And I asked Eric, I said, why did you decide? To pick on this, he goes, I've seen it. I've seen this in schools that I've been in.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  And he said he's visited, visited over 2,000 schools with, with his books, Eric Walters. And I said, well, I desperately want this book because then I want to be able to tell audiences that, you know, there's resources available for older kids too, to start these same conversations around their need to matter and how an adult can still care for, for older kids as well.

• 1:06:33John R. Miles?

  Kurt, I wasn't even going to bring this up and it's, it's not something I had talked to you about, but since you, you brought up these different types of programs. One thing I've learned by doing a podcast as long as I have is people don't pay for information, they pay for the application of information. So something I try to do with every episode is I create a workbook so that people will take the ideas from the podcast and apply it in their lives. So when I was writing E-Matter Luma, I thought the same thing kind of applies to a children's book. It's one thing for a child to read it, another thing for them to put it into practice. So off the back of this, I've done two major steps. The first is I learned about this school in Grand Junction, Colorado

• 1:07:18John R. Miles?

  that needed money so that they could create a new environment in their playgrounds for kids. So they started this kindness challenge. And before they knew it, they had 2,000 acts of kindness done in this small school of 300 kids. And it kind of gave me this idea to create this application that we're launching at the same time the book is coming out called Pass the Ripple. And the idea here is for kids to read the book and then to start implementing ripples of kindness, which what we're creating in the tool is they can see this grow on a map and how far their ripple goes throughout the world. But we are also creating a segment for teachers and educators

• 1:08:04John R. Miles?

  that's going to be a year-long toolkit so that they can take this ripple idea embedded into either after-school programs, school programs. To keep this going, at the end of the year, we'll create a book for each child that shows how they have become a hero in their own life to the world around them. And then I partnered with a, a division at Kaplan called AB Studios. And we're actually creating a six-course interactive

• 1:08:34John R. Miles?

  Ecosystem where it's like a Pixar-like environment where the kids can go through these different courses. And then for the educators, we're giving them school tools that they can use that supplement the coursework. So it becomes a whole program to embed this into more children's lives. So I know I hadn't told you about it, but I'm really excited about.

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  Well, it's great. And I'm glad you did because it satisfies my need to see things happen that can really keep these ideas going. And kids, when they're doing that, when they're, you know, they're acts of kindness, they'll remember how they felt in terms of that and how they will want to get that feeling. I'm sure what you'll be doing through that is you're going to be creating a whole, you know, legion of kids who say, I want to do something public service wise, or at least if they're going to get locked into the world of achievement and all the pressures there, they'll still have a sense of balance in terms of needing that connection with other people and a sense of what's right and wrong in terms of how you treat other people. And one of the things that's related to that is, you know, we hear this talking, people

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  talk about how, you know, we have more similarities than we have differences. This will also show the similarities that people have in terms of the common needs and interests and everybody needing to have this kind of experience. But it's critical, especially, you know, instead of waiting for something to happen, to make things happen like, like you're doing there, both for the students and the teachers in ways that can, can grow. And I'm sure like there will be kids who decide their career path as a result of this kind of experience and how it makes them feel. And, you know, I know a famous researcher, Robert J. Sternberg, who studied different types of intelligence. He's talked about gifted kids and how there needs to be something that puts those gifted

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  kids, intellectually gifted and talented kids, puts them on a stream towards public service so that they can use their incredible creativity and insights. And this is the sort of thing that would take some of those kids and put them in that stream or create a spark with some of these kids where their hidden gifts and talents are then discovered by others. So, so keep going and if you can clone yourself.

• 1:10:52John R. Miles?

  Gord, my final question for you is, after a lifetime of studying this, if a child or an adult out there is listening right now who might feel unseen, what would you want them to hear?

• 1:11:07Speaker 01

  I would want them to hear the part about how they can be seen by engaging in things for public service, just or checking in on somebody where you don't have to wait, you can, and you can see it. And there are cases, when I talk about the healing power of mattering, I couldn't put everything into the article that's coming out in the next month or so, but there are cases of people who feel like they don't matter. They're depressed, they may have other forms of mental health challenges. And what happened is they got some role, maybe in a treatment facility or in a community. And they said, hey, wait a minute, I do make a difference. I do matter. I do have some way of being an origin rather than a pawn. And it's transformed lives.

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  And I can find, if I was going on a search, I can find at least 30 stories in published journal articles and chapters where somebody took on a role like that, and it changed their life as well as the lives that they encountered along the way. And I also acknowledge, I don't want to minimize people's pain. I don't want to minimize the pain. And people go, well, you know, I don't have much opportunity to matter. Is a concern that some people tell me, and my wife has said this to me, you know, what about the people who feel like there's no open door for them? There's going to be a door there if you can find one, whether it's in your community or reaching out to other people and or even finding a younger person that you can make a difference in, because they might need somebody to listen to them when nobody else is.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  And, you know, my, my wife was a school librarian, and she had told me after she got one year as a school librarian, it was her goal, and then she retired. And it started about halfway through the year, that there were five young girls who came, and instead of going out for recess or for lunch, they would come to the library just to talk to her. And I said, you know, what difference are you making in their lives? Because they're there for a reason. You're providing them with something that they are not getting enough of. And you're, you know, being a role model. I said, that'll probably be one of the hardest things about retiring is not having that daily interaction with those, those girls in this case. But there's so many different ways.

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  If somebody, I think at the end of the day, the best advice I would tell somebody who feels they don't matter to others, regardless of that, you still need to matter to yourself. You're not going to let other people rule your emotions. You're not going to have to have other people make you feel a certain way that you're going to say, you know, I have a role to play. I have a valuable role. And famous people who've become legendary have already known about this. Fred Rogers, who started his work in Canada, by the way, before he went to Pittsburgh, said his number one goal was to let every kid know they matter because they all do matter. And I know that's the case with Oprah and others. It's like, everybody has a need to matter.

• 1:14:02Speaker 01

  But at the end of the day, don't let others rule your emotion. Find a way that you matter to yourself. So you'll go get help if you need it, or you'll go to the appointment that you're supposed to go to, so that you're valuing yourself, so that you'll be around longer and then can make a difference in other people's lives.

• 1:14:19John R. Miles?

  Gord, I love what you just said because it's exactly why I wrote You Matter, Luma, because every child needs to hear those words, "You matter," before the world teaches them otherwise.

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And one last plug for Angela. She told me one day, she goes, you know, I'm kind of the person who came up with the "You Matter" phrase from her TED Talk like 15 years ago. And then it got embraced in terms of prevention efforts. But, you know, wouldn't everybody be doing so much better if everybody did have a sincere and unconditional, deep sense of mattering? You want to talk about world change, that's the route to go.

• 1:14:54John R. Miles?

  Gord, always such an honor to get to talk to you and thank you so much for coming back on Passion Struck and love, love the new work that you have coming out and such a powerful article that will be coming out in the next month.

• 1:15:07Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. You know, I love to have these conversations and it's like kindred spirits, which of course comes from the great Canadian Anne of Green Gables story, which is really about mattering. When you think about it, I say to parents, read Anne of Green Gables with your kids because Anne comes as an orphan, gets adopted by the people who finally see her and care about her. And then she forgoes her teaching career because Marilla needs her, spoiler alert, after Matthew dies. And I realized at one point, that's why that story resonates with people so much. The sense of being lost, being taken in by people who care, and then sticking around to make a difference in their lives. Everybody has the potential.

• 1:15:48John R. Miles?

  What a way to close. Thank you again, Gord.

• 1:15:51Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:15:52John R. Miles?

  That brings us to the end of today's conversation with Gordon Flett. If this episode stayed with you, it's likely because it touched something deeper than insight. It touched recognition because what Gordon's work reveals is this: anti-mattering is not a minor feeling. It's a psychological state that reshapes how we see ourselves and the world. Loneliness and insignificance often travel together, what he calls double jeopardy, feeling unseen and alone at the same time. And mattering is not optional. In childhood, it's a core developmental need that shapes identity, agency, and resilience. The most important takeaway is that one person, one teacher, one parent, one moment of attention

• 1:16:35John R. Miles?

  can change everything. Today's episode is a reminder that mattering doesn't require grand gestures. It's built in small moments, being noticed, being listened to, being remembered. And today, as You Matter Luma enters the world, that message feels more important than ever because every child deserves to hear those words before the world teaches them otherwise. If this conversation resonated with you, share it with someone who may need to be That they matter. Leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and explore the reflections and resources at theignitedlife.net. To continue the work, learn more about You Matter Luma at YouMatterLuma.com.

• 1:17:18John R. Miles?

  Explore PassTheRipple.com and how to bring it into your home or classroom and watch the full conversation on YouTube. And next, we continue this journey into the architecture of mattering and human behavior with Dr. Martin Shaw, New York Times bestselling author of Liturgies of the Wild, which gives us a new encounter with myths beyond the world that Joseph Campbell created. I love this episode and can't wait for you to check it out.

• 1:17:45Speaker 03

  I talk in the book about making a covenant with limit because I don't think that's encouraged anymore with all the free credit cards and the you can be anybody you want and all of that kind of thing. Actually, myths say something very radical, very unfashionable. You are meant to be something quite specific. You're not meant to be a million different things. You're meant to trade growth for depth. So what I mean by that is growth is a wonderful thing. I've grown, but when it's a kind of hysterical growth that the internet and modern media encourages, you've become three miles wide, two inches deep, you know? And I'm always looking for something that has greater depth.

• 1:18:26John R. Miles?

  Until then, remember, you matter when your presence is felt. You matter when your absence is noticed, and you matter most when you help someone else feel the same. I'm John Miles, and you've been passion struck.