The key to a fulfilling life? Feeling like you matter to others

By Kara Alaimo, CNN

(CNN) — These days when it’s cold out and gets dark early, it can be tempting to hole up at home and keep to ourselves.

But that’s not good for our health and well-being now or at any time of year, according to a new book.

The secret to thriving is feeling like we matter to other people, journalist Jennifer Breheny Wallace writes in “Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose.”

Attaining that feeling requires getting out of our PJs and going out to do things such as socialize with friends and help people who need a hand.

I spoke to Wallace about how to do it.

This conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

CNN: Why is it important for people to feel like they matter?

Jennifer Breheny Wallace: It’s a fundamental human need after food and shelter. Researchers find that it drives our behavior, for better or worse. When we meet that need, we thrive. And when we don’t meet it, people suffer. When we are made to feel like we don’t matter, we can withdraw or turn to substances or self-harm to try to squelch that psychic pain, or we might lash out. Things like road rage, incivility and political extremes are all desperate attempts to show people “I do matter.”

CNN: You write that there are five components of mattering. What are they?

Wallace: Researchers have found that there are certain ingredients to feeling like you matter:

• Recognition is the idea that you are appreciated for who you are, not just what you do.
• Reliance is this idea that there are people in this world who depend on you, trust you and rely on you.
• Importance is the idea that you are significant to the people in your life. And that sense of significance is found in small, everyday moments — such as when you’re made to feel that the things you like are worthy of being remembered.
• Attunement is this idea that you are worthy of being understood and responded to meaningfully.
• Ego extension is just a fancy way of feeling like others are invested in you, and that you have people in your life that you’re invested in.

CNN: In our culture, it’s become normal to hire people to do things that we used to help one another out with. Why isn’t that good for us?

Wallace: The village still exists, but it’s behind a paywall. And that’s because our relationships, which should really be transformational, have become transactional.

When every need becomes something we can hire out — childcare, caring for our elderly parents, getting Uber rides to the airport, ordering in meals when you’re recovering from surgery — it enables us to get some needs met, but it doesn’t give us the social proof that we matter.

It can’t replace that emotional signal of mutual reliance. According to a decade’s worth of research, our resilience is fortified in the depth and support of our relationships.

CNN: Many of us feel like we’re so overstretched that we can’t possibly take on more responsibilities to help people. But you say that’s not always the way energy works.

Wallace: Human energy doesn’t necessarily operate like a bank account. It can work more like a muscle. So, when we offer small acts of support, whether in our home, neighborhood, work or wider community, it can actually boost our sense of purpose and agency — and that’s what gives us energy.

CNN: As a person caring for young kids, my immediate reaction to the idea of mattering was “Of course I matter, my family wouldn’t function for a day without me.” But you say another important component is for caregivers to feel like their needs are important, too. Why?

Wallace: The exhaustion comes when we’re constantly pouring out, but our own sense of mattering is not being replenished. And that’s often the case for young parents who feel a real lack of societal and structural support. It can also feel that way when we’re caring for elderly parents. Those people cannot necessarily reciprocate. But you can find other people in your world who can remind you of your own sense of mattering and your importance, and create the conditions where you, too, feel prioritized.

CNN: You say that those people are often friends, right?

Wallace: Yes, we’re often told as caregivers to put our oxygen mask on first, but what I have found is that friends are the oxygen. Resilience is not rooted in things like taking a bubble bath or lighting a candle. It’s rooted in relationships.

There’s research out of the Mayo Clinic that finds that even just an hour a week of spending time with people who bolster our sense of mattering, who let us feel seen and understood and cared for, fills us up. That is what gives us the energy and the bandwidth we need to be the kind of first responders that we need to be to help others.

CNN: You also write that practicing self-care is good for the people in our lives. How?

We are often conditioned to think self-care is selfish, but it’s actually, in my mind, strategic. It allows us to show up for others from a place of fullness instead of depletion. You can’t sustainably give what you don’t have.

Prioritizing ourselves doesn’t necessarily mean always putting ourselves first. But it is including our needs on the list of needs we are trying to fill in our lives. And when we do that, we allow ourselves to be energized to be able to continue to give.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.