I think for so many of us, are we chasing success because we genuinely want the success, or is it because succeeding has become the way we prove our worth?

Well, this became the pattern that I saw.

There's a psychologist in Canada who's been talking about anti-mattering for some time now, which is what it feels like when you start losing significance inside.

Yes.

I went into this with a question.

about we keep saying what's happening inside of us instead of saying what is happening around us that is causing this in the first place.

And that's when I began looking at this concept that I call systemic unmattering.

How can our listeners recognize that gap in their own lives? What are the first warning signs that someone is not feeling valued?

So I'd love to get into your thoughts on mattering.

Yeah, it's a big topic, and it's a big question.

And I think if you're someone listening to this, a, a way to simplify this is t- is to go back to us the moment we are born.

Because from the moment we're born, the human mind is searching for a baseline signal.

It wants confirmation that our presence carries weight.

And so from the, the moment that you come out of your mother's womb, you have what is called the mattering instinct, and this instinct is as fundamental as our need for safety or love.

Yet what's happening as I have done more and more research is as we move through the institutions that organize our modern life, that signal is increasingly translated into something that becomes more conditional and transactional.

How do you think we can shift things in this heavy marketing-driven world that is pushing and trying to figure out new ways to make people get more stuck on social media, more concerned with more followers, more audience, you know, more validation from external sources than internal?

So at what point did you have an inkling, even, you know, as a teenager, that you might be doing something someday similar to, to what you're doing today?

I always knew that God had a special plan for me, and I knew that at some point in my life I was meant to serve others.

I just didn't know in what way.

And I certainly, uh, as I became an adult, a young adult, I didn't, uh, have that feeling.

I was in the military, coming out of the military, and at that time I was really focused on, uh, success, achievement, uh, go- going up the ladder as quickly as I, as I could.

But that all came to kind of an abrupt change, uh, s- somewhere ar- around when I was 34 or 35.

Um, at the time, I was a senior executive at Lowe's Home Improvement, living just outside of Charlotte, and I was going to a Methodist church and, uh, committed myself to taking Discipleship One, which if the listener is not familiar with this, it's like a master's degree in the Bible because it's a 34-week commitment.

So talk us through some of the tenets of the book that help people view themselves differently.

The show starts now.

But giving as much resources as I possibly could, uh, within the financial constraints that I had, right? So what it end-ended up doing is, as the team delivered major w-wins, I wanted to continually giving back to them.

And so I, I was reinforcing, it's not only what I can get from you, but it's what can I give back to you? And, and then the other thing I did was I really spent time understanding what was going on with them outside of work.

Did they have a sick family member? Did they have other aspirations? Did they love music? Did they have a kid who was on a traveling baseball team? 'Cause when you connect with people both inside and outside of work, and you see them as a whole person, it really becomes, how do we both become better because we're doing this together?

Yeah.

So many companies are asking, "What jobs can we automate?" Instead of asking, "What becomes more human when machines do more of the work?" And that is where m-my work is clearly focused.

Um, tech, you know, technology and operations should establish the floor of performance, not the ceiling of human judgment.

And so if you wanna hear more about how you can apply this in the age of AI, you can connect with me.

Mm

... or our spiritual creator put us here, uh, to perform.

And so i- in the back of my mind, I had been researching this question for, for over a decade.

Like I kept seeing burnout, disengagement, people who were broken, people who were more anxious, mental health crisises going up and up, the loneliness epidemic, the hopelessness epidemic, and my hypothesis was all of those can't be separate things.

There's gotta be something larger that is driving them.

So at, at...

When I started out, mattering wasn't a concept or something I thought I was gonna study, but the more I started to research it, I came across the work of, uh, Professor, uh, Gordon Flett, who was teaching at the, the University of York in Ontario, and he has this concept of anti-mattering, and the more I started to look into this, the more I started...

Mm.

Road, yeah.

Yes.

And they had this course called Discipleship.

And if people don't know what this is, this is not like you go to this for a couple of weeks and it's over with.

This was 34-week commitment, twice a week, huge investment with the pastor.

And During that, I was kind of given this vision that I was supposed to be helping.

The words God gave me were the beaten, broken, battered, bored, lonely, and helpless of the world.

And

The show starts now.

But giving as much resources as I possibly could, uh, within the financial constraints that I had, right? So what ended up, ended up doing is as the team delivered major w-wins, I wanted to continually giving back to them.

And so I, I was reinforcing it's not only what I can get from you, but it's what can I give back to you? And, and then the other thing I did was I really spent time understanding what was going on with them outside of work.

Did they have a sick family member? Did they have other aspirations? Did they love music? Did they have a kid who was on a traveling baseball team? 'Cause when you connect with people both inside and outside of work, and you see them as a whole person, it really becomes, how do we both become better because we're doing this together?

Yeah.

So many companies are asking, "What jobs can we automate?" Instead of asking, "What becomes more human when machines do more of the work?" And that is where m-my work is clearly focused.

Um, tech, you know, technology and operations should establish the floor of performance, not the ceiling of human judgment.

And so if you wanna hear more about how you can apply this in the age of AI, you can connect with me.

[upbeat music]

Hello, I'm John Miles.

I'm a former Fortune 50 chief information officer, a US Navy veteran, host of the Passion Struck podcast, and author of Passion Struck, which was honored as a Next Big Idea Club must read.

Years ago, an experience completely altered my life when I felt called to serve the lonely, the broken, the disengaged, and the burned out.

For years, we've treated those as separate crisises.

We diagnose workplace burnout, cite loneliness epidemics, and prescribe wellness apps.

But the deeper I went, the more an uncomfortable paradox surfaced.

Mm-hmm

... you know, in that, in that school environment.

And that's where in the past play had such a profound role on what we were experiencing because that's how we experienced the school environment.

But now in so many of the school systems around the world, play has been taken away.

And so our education sh- systems have shifted from adapting institutions to children toward adapting children to the institutions.

And, and so you, you can see just in those two examples how the environments are completely shaping us, and they're taking that very social immunity away from us.

If you think about modern school systems, what we're teaching them is that they don't matter for who they are.

And who is the consumer as well?

And you

asked me like, what was a down point in my career? Um, a down point for me when it was, um, I was at a company called Catalina marketing and I had an EVP role there.

And, um, It was a great company, great employees.

I hit it at the wrong time.

So it had been owned by a private equity group, and that private equity group had positioned it for sale.

And so they had put all the capital into it that they were going to put.

it went through this acquisition process.

Did you realize this because you saw the symptoms, or did this come up when you had deeper conversations with people who were struggling with the same? And if so, what were some of the things they were saying?

Uh, tell us about the hidden costs that it brings along with it.

Yeah.

O- one of, one of the greatest impacts it brings is something that I call the slow fade because this is what it felt like when it happened in me.

And the s- slow fade is really this phenomenon that happens when repeated experience of being unseen, unheard, or unvalued make you slowly withdraw from your own life.

You still function, you still succeed, but less and less of you is actually present.

And what I learned from going through this is that that achievement that caused me to strive for success ultimately, ultimately was measuring my output.

But when you think about mattering, mattering is the felt sense that your life has value and that your presence and actions make a difference.

So when we put all of these together, how can we address it?