How To Matter & Live With Purpose | Jennifer Wallace

**Adam Taggart** (0:06)
Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm its founder and your host, Adam Taggart. While we talk about money a lot on this program, it's very important to keep in mind that money is a means to wealth. It's not true wealth in and of itself. True wealth is pretty simple when you boil it down. It's having quality relationships, a sense of purpose, and good health. Today, on this special Christmas release, we're going to dive deeply into the first two of those. We're fortunate to be joined by Jennifer Wallace, New York Times bestselling author. She's got a new book out titled Mattering, The Secret To A Life Of Deep Connection And Purpose. Jennifer, thanks so much for joining us today.

**Jennifer Wallace** (0:43)
Oh, thanks so much for having me. I would actually argue we're going to dive into all three because without social health, we don't have physical health.

**Adam Taggart** (0:51)
Great point. All right, we'll make it a trifecta. Fantastic. Okay. So yes, I've been very excited for this interview. Your people reached out to me as I was telling you.
I literally get hit every couple of hours by people who are pitching a speaker, many of whom are just not a good fit for this channel in any way, shape, or form. But yours was different than my normal fare, but very of interest to me for the reason that I remind people on this channel as I just did in the intro. This channel is all about wealth building, and so we're so focused on money in that discussion, but we got to remember that money isn't the end goal, right? And if we're looking to lead and live happy, fulfilled lives, what are the things that are really important there? And they're the three things that we talked about. And your book, Mattering, is right in the strike zone. As you just said, maybe it applies to actually all three of those. So it's the perfect topic, if you will, here. So why don't we just dive right into this? I know that you have done a lot of research for this book and also the previous book that you wrote, but I'm sure we'll talk about it a bit too. Why is mattering so important to the human condition?
Why does it matter? What are its benefits? What does it give us? And maybe once you've answered all that, what sparked you to write the book now about mattering?

**Jennifer Wallace** (2:16)
So mattering is a fundamental human need that all of us have all over the world, simply defined as feeling valued by family, friends, community, and having an opportunity to add value back. And for so many people today, this need is going unmet. People feel lonely. They don't feel valued. They are disengaged at work. They don't know how they're adding value. So, and I'm sure we'll get into this, there are a variety of reasons why there's been this, as I call it, an erosion or a crisis of mattering in our culture today. But it is important because when we feel like we matter, and this is decades worth of research, when we feel like we matter, we show up to the world in positive ways. We want to engage. We want to connect. We want to contribute. But when we are chronically made to feel like we don't matter, some of us withdraw, become anxious, depressed. Some people might turn to substances to try to alleviate the pain. Others lash out in anger, road rage, political extremes, mass shootings. These can be seen as desperate attempts to say, I'll show you I matter. And we have for so long treated mattering like a nice to have feeling.
It is actually so much more fundamental than that, and we need to go back to meeting that need.

**Adam Taggart** (3:54)
All right. So I'm curious if your research goes here. But so clearly, so the research says that mattering is important, perhaps essential to humans, or at least human thriving. Does it get to, like, why? I mean, evolutionarily, you could say, look, if you were just a domesticated house pet and somebody fed you and sheltered you, why isn't that good enough? Why isn't that winning evolutionarily? Why do we have to matter?

**Jennifer Wallace** (4:28)
Yeah. So let's go back to evolution. For our earliest ancestors, feeling valued by the group and knowing that you add value to the group was what protected you. It's what kept you fed, it's what kept you protected from the elements. When you were made to feel like you didn't matter, when you were pushed out, rejected, that was certain death. And so we have evolved to crave that sense of mattering, that social proof that we matter to the group. And back then, it was life or death. And frankly, I would argue today, mattering is still life or death. When we don't have a sense of mattering, we are not socially connected. It damages our mental health, it damages our social health, and ultimately, it damages our physical health. Loneliness, anxiety, depression, disengagement, meaninglessness, purposelessness. This is painful. This is a painful way to go through life. Mattering is really the pathway to thriving. And to what some might be seeking, happiness. Happiness has never been my goal.