3 Questions to Stop Letting Other People Define Your Worth | John R. Miles - EP 837

In this episode, John R. Miles explores how external scorecards become internal judgments and how to reclaim agency through self-compassion, intentional choices, and healthier environments.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:27Speaker 02

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• 1:57John R. Miles?

  Coming up next on Passion Struck. Recently, my new book, The Mattering Effect, landed on the US Today Bestseller List. Thank you. That ranking exists because of you. But I wanted to tell you what happened in my head right after I heard the news. My immediate instinct was to check where it landed on the New York Times Bestselling List. Think about that. I wrote a book about how the systems around us teach us to measure our worth by what we produce. And my first instinct, after good news, was to go looking for the next list.

• 2:40John R. Miles?

  That's how deeply conditioned even I am to let an external rank tell me how I should feel. If it's that easy to get hooked, even after writing a book on mattering, imagine what it does to the rest of us. So today isn't about the book. It's about the scorecards in your life and what they're quietly doing to you. Hey, it's your friend John, and welcome to Passion Struck. I'm so glad you're here. Whether you're a longtime listener or someone who just discovered the show, thank you for pressing play today. Maybe you've built the life you were supposed to want, but you've quietly wondered why it still doesn't feel like enough.

• 3:24John R. Miles?

  If that's you, you're in the right place. Every week, I sit down with the world's top scientists, researchers, and thinkers to uncover what it actually takes to build an intentional life that matters. Thanks for joining me. Let's get into it.

• 3:44John R. Miles?

  Welcome back to episode 837 of Passion Struck. We're currently in our October series, The Architecture of Agency, rewriting the rules of worth, work, and adaptability. If you've noticed, we've been running in high gear lately. That was entirely by design. Over the last three weeks, we threw ourselves into the launch of The Mattering Effect, releasing deep dive interviews and tactical conversations to attack one specific problem: the exhaustion that happens when you're conditioned to measure your worth entirely by what you produce. Thank you to every single one of you who picked up a copy, left a review, and made this launch so deeply meaningful.

• 4:29John R. Miles?

  This month, we're moving past the diagnosis and examining the blueprint. We're looking at how modern exhaustion gets engineered into the environments we navigate every single day: our companies, our families, our schools, and our feeds. That is why three recent conversations belong together, right here, right now. Dr. Kristin Neff, on episode 833, broke down the neuroscience of self-compassion. Dr. Nir Helvee from Stanford, in episode 835, uncovered why broken hierarchies pull teams apart. And Heather Monahan, in episode 836, showed us what it looks like to walk back into an intimidating room with unshakable confidence.

• 5:12John R. Miles?

  When you lay those three side by side, the whole picture becomes clearer. Nir described the scorecard rooms used to measure us. Kristin described what happens when we carry that scorecard inside our own heads. And Heather showed us what it looks like to finally see the design: step out of the cage and reclaim your agency. By the end of today's episode, you're going to walk away with one practical diagnostic: the blueprint check. Three questions you can run on any room you walk into, starting tomorrow morning. So let's begin. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life that matters.

• 5:57John R. Miles?

  Now, let that journey begin.

• 6:05John R. Miles?

  Here's a passage, early in The Little Prince, the classic by Antoine du Saint-Exupéry that I think about more often than many things I've ever read. The narrator says that when you tell grownups you've made a new friend, they never ask the questions that matter. They never ask what his voice sounds like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies? Instead, they ask, "How old is he? How many brothers does he have? How much does his father earn?" And only then, the narrator says, "Did they feel that they know him." That was written in the 1940s.

• 6:48John R. Miles?

  Imagine telling the narrator about today. The grownups now have a leaderboard, a performance tier, a follower count, a class rank, a rating next to your name. The figures. Hold on to that word because it's going to follow us through this entire episode. Who decides the figures? What do they do to us? And what happens when we start asking them about ourselves? Nir Helvee opened our conversation with an observation that's easy to miss because it's everywhere. Hierarchy is in corporations, families, schools, militaries, even Wikipedia.

• 7:33John R. Miles?

  It has survived thousands of years of attempts to eliminate it. And I appreciate it that he doesn't treat hierarchy as the villain. He says there are two kinds: the well-functioning kind and the broken kind. The broken kind shows up in three ways: ultra-competitiveness, injustice, and instability. When people are getting punches from every direction, from rival colleges and unfair bosses, they don't stay and fix it. They leave. Now, why do rankings sit at the center of broken hierarchies? Nir gave a very simple reason. We have this innate desire

• 8:16John R. Miles?

  to know where we stand relative to others. That's it. Every scorecard is an answer to a question we can't stop asking: "Where do I stand?" Those are the figures. The grownups in that story would recognize every one of them. And look at how many of them we live under. At work, stacked rankings, performance tiers, quarterly reviews, the sales leaderboard on the wall. Online, it's no different: likes, followers, view counts. Then there's school, where we have class rank and test percentiles. Even the neighborhood. None of these ask who you are.

• 9:00John R. Miles?

  They ask how you compare.

• 9:04John R. Miles?

  I know this world from the inside. At the Naval Academy, our class rank determined how quickly we got promoted once we got to the fleet. Years ahead or years behind? Then came Anderson Consulting, then Lowe's, then Dell, where if you landed in the bottom 10% to 20%, there was a very real chance you were no longer a Dell employee once the rankings came out. Let me be clear about something. Having standards isn't the problem. Tracking a goal isn't the problem. A measurement of what you did is information, and information can help you grow. Neer said exactly that.

• 9:47John R. Miles?

  Forced ranking can work when people take it upon themselves to improve their work. The problem begins when the room turns a measurement of activity into a verdict of your worth. And Neer told me what he's worried about when that happens. People stop helping their teammates. They hoard information. In worst cases, they sabotage, even spread malicious gossip. He also explained what happens when the prize for finishing first is enormous and the margin for winning is tiny. The people who believe they can win pour everything in. The people who don't believe they can win,

• 10:32John R. Miles?

  don't try harder. They leave where they quietly check out. When people conclude that nothing that they do changes where they land, you're watching what Marty Seligman called learned helplessness. A room built that way doesn't just rank people, it pulls them apart. It reaches beyond the office, too. I told Neer about running cross-country and track at the Naval Academy. One of my best friends on the team and I were chasing the four-minute mile. He hit it. I didn't. I was genuinely happy for him, but something shifted anyway. His achievement didn't change my running.

• 11:16John R. Miles?

  The meaning I attached to it changed how I perceived my own success. That's exactly what scoreboards do. The room hands you a scale, and before you know it, you're standing on it. But Neer also offered the way through, and I want you to hear it. He talked about cultivating environments where people have multiple pathways to showing they matter. He pointed to Steve Kerr, a role player beside Michael Jordan on the Chicago Bulls championship teams, who knew he mattered without being the star. And when I asked what single question he'd leave with every leader and team member, he said, "Does your hierarchy bring people closer together

• 12:01John R. Miles?

  or pull them apart? That's a design question, and design questions have design answers." Quick pause here. If this episode is changing how you see the rooms you live and work in, I'd love for you to explore my book, The Mattering Effect. It's about how we learn to measure our worth, why so many people feel invisible, and how we build lives and environments where people know they matter. You can find it wherever books are sold or at matteringeffect.com. When we come back, what happens when the scoreboard moves inside your head? Now, a quick break for our sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who support the show.

• 12:43Speaker 04

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• 13:22John R. Miles?

  You're listening to Passion Struck right here on the Passion Struck Network. Welcome back. Neer showed us how rooms keep score. Now, let's talk about what happens when we start keeping score ourselves. When I sat down with Kristin Neff, I asked her a question I've wondered about for years. We are remarkably capable of extending grace to other people and astonishingly cruel to ourselves. How did we become a species that talks to itself this way? Her answer was conditioning, biological, cultural, and for some people, family. When we feel threatened, we go into fight, flight, or freeze.

• 14:05John R. Miles?

  And when the threat is our own failure or our own inadequacy, we turn that response inward. We fight ourselves. Part of us is trying to keep us safe. Get us in line. Beat us up before somebody else does. Then she layered on the culture. The belief that being kind to yourself is selfish or makes you lazy. The bar for feeling worthy keeps rising. The grades, the right school, the right job, the right salary. And social media, she said, takes a vague sense of how popular you are and turns it into a number. How many likes? How many followers?

• 14:47John R. Miles?

  We build our sense of worth on conditions. Then she drew the contrast at the heart of her life's work. Self-esteem is evaluating yourself. Self-compassion is being there for yourself when you're hurting. And the entry requirement for self-compassion is wonderfully low. With self-compassion your only criteria for needing self-compassion is being a flawed human being. Like, that's a box most people can check. Notice, though, how this connects to Neer. His rooms create the scorecard.

• 15:30John R. Miles?

  Kristin's research shows how the scorecard becomes an inner voice. The room stops needing to rank you because you've learned to do it for them. Remember the grownups who only wanted the figures? That is what happens when you become one and you're the friend they're asking about. How much do I earn? How do I rank? How many people liked it? You ask it about yourself, and you answer it, too. She gave an example I couldn't shake. Her team taught self-compassion at a children's hospital in Austin, where the prevailing culture was self-sacrifice. Work three shifts in a row.

• 16:14John R. Miles?

  The more you ignore your own needs for the kids, the better you are. The result was the staff so burned out that they couldn't care for the children they were there to serve. Her point is that people who care the most are often the most vulnerable to burnout. And the answer isn't to care less. It's to include yourself in the circle of care. I told Kristin about my own version of this. I call it the slow fade. For years, I was sitting in boardrooms at dinner with friends in my own living room, fully effective on the outside while hollowing out on the inside. The more I presented one version of myself to the world, the more the real me retreated and the more invisible I felt to myself.

• 16:58John R. Miles?

  The room never had to tell me I didn't matter. I had started telling myself. Here's what I want every listener to take from her. When I asked Kristin about the link between self-compassion and agency, she explained that when we're stuck in harsh self-judgment, our sense of agency shrinks. We feel helpless, but warmth changes that. Mindfulness gives us space between a feeling and a reaction. Kindness and connection give us stable ground to respond more wisely. And Kristin said something simple and, I think, quietly radical. We aren't computers.

• 17:42John R. Miles?

  We need warmth, care, and emotional safety to have agency at all. Agency isn't just willpower. It grows in safe soil. And her favorite phrase for building that safety, the one she says lands the most powerfully, is only five words. "I will not abandon you."

• 18:05John R. Miles?

  So rooms keep score and the critic keeps it going inside. That sounds like a trap. This is where Heather Monahan comes in because she showed us the way out through a story that happened about two weeks before we recorded. She had just dropped her son off at college in Boston, near where she grew up. While he trained for basketball at her old high school, she walked back through the halls. Worcester Academy. She had attended on a full scholarship as a work-study student surrounded by very wealthy classmates. She remembered the shame. She remembered believing that she had to prove she was worthy of being there.

• 18:50John R. Miles?

  And she remembered how enormous and frightening that place felt. Then she walked in as an adult after speaking around the world. And here's what she told me. "I was shrinking myself so that I felt small in a large place when the reality is I'm large in a smaller place." She told her son, "You are the only one that can shrink yourself." The school hadn't changed at all. It was only her. Her old softball coach, one of her biggest supporters, never even realized how insecure she'd been. Nobody in that building had been holding her down.

• 19:36John R. Miles?

  She built the cage herself.

• 19:40John R. Miles?

  Now, I want to be careful because there's a trap in that idea. If I only gave you Heather's story, you might conclude rooms don't matter and it's all in your head. That's not true and Heather doesn't say it. Remember Nir. Broken hierarchies are real and so is injustice. Remember Kristin. We didn't choose our family, our genes, or our conditioning. Agency is not blame. Heather's own story proves it. She described a workplace that quietly turned toxic around her. Her response had two sides and it's the best model I've heard for what agency looks like.

• 20:24John R. Miles?

  First, she said, "I can't change that, but I can change me." She built a 30-day plan to rebuild her confidence with daily actions a playlist, even a photo of herself at her most confident. And second, when the room itself was the problem, she talked about her golden handcuffs. She stayed because she believed she couldn't leave when the real limit was that she wasn't thinking big enough. Her advice to people stuck there was blunt. "Change the environment. There is somewhere that wants to have you." She even showed how to use the room on purpose. On a treadmill alone, she'd quit early.

• 21:09John R. Miles?

  Running outside in Miami near college athletes and strangers waving through the rain, she kept going. Same woman, different architecture.

• 21:19John R. Miles?

  So here's the blueprint. Nir shows us that rooms are designed. Kristin shows us that the design gets inside us. Heather shows us that once you can see the design, you have real moves. Change yourself inside the room. Change the room or leave it. That's the architecture of agency in one sentence and it's what I call the Blueprint Check. Three questions. One, who designed this room? Was it built to measure and reward? Does it bring people closer together or pull them apart? That's Nir.

• 22:02John R. Miles?

  Two, what is it teaching me about my worth? Is this a measure or have I turned it into a verdict? And can I offer myself the warmth I'd offer a friend right now? That's Kristin.

• 22:19John R. Miles?

  Three, what's my move? Can I change it, see it differently, or leave it? And what's one small action I can take today? That's Heather. So now you have the three questions of the Blueprint Check. Let me now run it on a room many of you know. Picture a hyper-competitive sales department with a weekly leaderboard on the wall and the bottom of the list flagged in red. Who designed this room? Someone who wanted to drive output. It measures one thing and it rewards the top spot. Does it bring people closer together or pull them apart? If people stop sharing what works, it's pulling them apart.

• 23:04John R. Miles?

  What is it teaching me about my worth? Watch for the moment the number on the wall becomes the number in your head. The week you're at the bottom of the list, do you hear, "I'm not good enough"? That's the scorecard moving inside. Treat the data as information about the week, not a verdict on you. Then put your hand on your chest and try Kristin's phrase. What's my move? Maybe it's a conversation with your manager about adding a team measure. Or one more way to show contribution. Nir said relatedness is available to people at any level. A gratitude letter, a moment of empathy, sharing what you know with a teammate.

• 23:50John R. Miles?

  Maybe you change yourself inside the room by tracking the number without carrying it home. And if the room is built to break people and won't change, Heather would tell you to start looking for the room that wants you. So here's where this leaves us. You will spend your life inside rooms that keep score. Some are well-designed and some are broken. You didn't build most of them, but you are not powerless inside them and you are not required to believe every number that they hand you. The point of this series isn't to blame you for your environment and it isn't to tell you the environment doesn't matter.

• 24:33John R. Miles?

  It's to help you see the blueprint so you can choose how you respond. Back to the narrator of The Little Prince one last time. The grownups only ever ask for the figures. The Blueprint Check is how you start asking the other questions. Not just what's your rank, but what do you bring? Not how much do you produce, but what do you love? And for yourself, not how am I measuring up, but what do I need right now? Your assignment is simple. Pick one room you spend a lot of time in, your workplace, your family group chat, your feed.

• 25:17John R. Miles?

  Run the Blueprint Check on it. Who designed this room? What is it teaching me about my worth? What's my move? Then take the smallest version of that move before the day is over. And if the answer to question two is unkind, try Kristin's phrase. Hand on your chest and say quietly, "I will not abandon you."

• 25:47John R. Miles?

  Next week, we continue our October series, The Architecture of Agency, with an incredible interview with Harvard professor, researcher, and author Alexis Redding. We're going to explore research that she found that confirms that students 40 to 50 years ago are experiencing the same feelings of loneliness, hopelessness, despair that college students today are experiencing. Take a listen to this.

• 26:22Speaker 05

  We thought that what we would hear is how different young people today were from the students in our classrooms, in our advising groups, on our campus.

• 26:32Speaker 05

  And then we pressed play and what we heard was this deeply resonant story that echoes exactly what our students talk about today.

• 26:42John R. Miles?

  Until next time, remember, a scorecard can measure what you did. It can't measure what you're worth. I'm John Miles and as always, stay curious, stay intentional, and stay passion struck.