The Mattering Effect: Finding Your Way Back to Meaning and Connection | John Miles

John Miles (0:00)

A healthy environment answers three questions. Do I belong here, which is inclusion? Do I have a say in what happens in this environment, which is control? And can I be real here, which is openness? And what I found is when those three signals weaken, which they're doing for many of us, people don't necessarily rebel, they end up shrinking.

SPEAKER_2 (0:30)

Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear.

We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life worth living.

This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf.

Eric Zimmer (1:14)

John Miles had the job he'd spent his career chasing. One of the top technology executives in the country, and he couldn't tell whether the company cared more about him or the chair he sat in.

He was judged on the last 48 hours of output, and he ended up going numb at work and then at home. He calls that state the vanish. Physically present, psychologically gone. Essential and inconsequential at the same time.

A lot of people I talk to understand that feeling. His new book, The Mattering Effect, is about why that happens and the path back to feeling like you count. I'm Eric Zimmer and this is The One You Feed.

SPEAKER_4 (1:59)

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SPEAKER_5 (2:30)

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Eric Zimmer (2:59)

Hey John, welcome to the show.

John Miles (3:01)

Hey Eric, it is so great to be back here and such an honor to be on your fantastic show.

Eric Zimmer (3:06)

Oh, thank you. I'm really excited to have you on. We're going to be discussing your latest book, which is called The Mattering Effect, Creating a Life of Meaning and Worth. But before we do that, we'll start in the way we always do with the parable. And in the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild. They say in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.

And the grandchild stops, think about it for a second, they look up at their grandparent, they say, well, which one wins?

And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

John Miles (3:58)

Eric, I think it's the perfect starting point to actually discuss this book, because it was that parable of what was feeding me in my life about a decade ago that caused me to start researching the underlying conditions that make up this whole book. For those who aren't familiar with me, at that point in time, I was a senior executive working in a very large $80 billion entity. And what I found at that time was that I had allowed myself to become very good at extracting the very authenticity that I so much wanted to bring forward to the world, but was afraid to show to the world.