|
In last year's book Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose, journalist Jennifer Breheny Wallace connects the research dots on loneliness and social disconnection to find a crisis of human beings believing they don't matter to anyone. As she notes in the book, "The rise in loneliness, burnout, and anxiety is the predictable consequence of a society that has forgotten how to make people feel valued." And when we don't feel valued, and negative feelings arise, this can promote unhealthy self-medicating and further distancing, and sometimes leads to taking harmful actions to prove one's significance.
With today's college students, a lack of connection and mattering can be driven by a combination of factors, including the availability of solo entertainment on phones, the growing ubiquity of AI supports that don't require a potentially awkward office-hours visit, and a COVID-era tendency to shy away from human interaction when it seems unnecessary. Students who feel they don't matter to a professor might not care as much about going to class, for example. But mattering to ourselves is even more foundational, as Wallace notes in this article in Greater Good Magazine. And when students don't feel they matter to themselves, that can dampen their motivation to learn, connect, perform, and engage at college.
Wallace emphasizes in her TED talk that we need to both feel valued and add value to have a sense of mattering to ourselves and others. And she has a useful take on asking for help — she sees it as a generous act toward another, to help them know that they matter. In student meetings, academic coaches have an opportunity to bring that and more ideas in to help students frame their learning experience as a discovery of how much they matter.
- Ask about ways a student has made a difference for someone else — or how they could.
- Bring in vision questions about what they'd like to improve in the world in their future work.
- Invite a student to go to office hours for a professor of a large lecture and help the professor know their help matters.
- When you have a student who matters too much and is drained out, frame asking for help as a way for someone else to feel they can make a difference.
- Let a student know they matter to you and to others in your community.
Coaches, we know you matter — a lot — let us help you fight the overwhelm with a community connection at a LifeBound training!
Explore which course is right for you at www.lifebound.com.
| 
