What It Really Means to Matter

Mattering is both a belief and a feeling.

It's an ongoing lived experience that you are genuinely valued and that you genuinely add value.

Mattering is the interconnected experience of adding value and feeling valued both to the self and to other people.

Researcher and community psychologist who sadly just passed away, Isaac Proletensky, depicts this as a mattering wheel, where you are adding value and feeling value to yourself, but you are also adding value and feeling valued in social contexts, such as in close relationships and at work and in your community.

And the challenge is that you cannot just experience mattering in one domain.

It is an interconnected experience.

So you can't just add value and feel value to yourself.

You can't just add value and feel value to other people.

You need both.

So what are we talking about when we talk about adding value and feeling valued? Feeling valued is an experience of being noticed, appreciated, feeling like people care about you.

It's knowing that people would miss you if you weren't there.

And you also feel like your input is wanted, that people are invested in you, and that people are just glad that you exist in the world.

Feeling valued is not just about being liked.

It's about feeling that your presence is something that is needed, seen, and appreciated.

You can also feel value to yourself, and that happens through self-acceptance and self-compassion.

The second side is adding value.

Adding value is about contribution.

It's about what you give.

Adding value to the self is being able to have belief in your abilities, that self-efficacy and that confidence to move the needle and the energy and agency to make a difference.

It's also having autonomy where you feel like you can make choices to move towards things that are important to you and that you feel competent in your skill set in order to do so.

Having a sense of mastery.

Those are ways that you can add value to yourself.

How you can add value to others is through contribution, through being helpful to others, being engaged, having meaning and purpose behind your actions, and being able to give feedback to others.

Adding value is knowing that your strengths, your efforts, that your presence, and that the roles that you hold in your life and at work, and even in your own mind, add value to yourself, to other people, and to work and into your community.

For example, I'll use this podcast.